Preamble

The House met at a Quarter past Two o' Clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER

CONFIRMATION (DONCASTER) BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered; to be read the Third time Tomorrow.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (WESTON-SUPER-MARE) BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered; to be read the Third time Tomorrow

Oral Answers to Questions — PENSIONS AND GRANTS

Mr. Benn Levy: asked the Minister of Pensions (1) if he will remove the present disparity in war disablement pensions as between ranks;
(2) if he will arrange that a single man in receipt of war disablement pension should receive, on marrying, the same as is allowed to a correspondingly disabled married man.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Ian Fraser: asked the Minister of Pensions if he has yet any statement to make as to improvements in war pensions and allowances, having regard to the new rates proposed for industrial disability pensions in the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Bill.

The Minister of Pensions (Mr. Wilfred Paling): I am afraid that I am not yet able to make any statement upon the review of war pensions.

Mr. Levy: Is the Minister aware that there is very little reason to suppose that a limb lost by a brigadier, who may be a company director, is of more value to him than a limb lost by a private, who may be a bricklayer? It is much more logical, if there is to be no flat rate, that the discrepancy—

Hon. Members: Speech.

Major Guy Lloyd: Will the Minister give careful consideration —and he has had a long time in which to do so —to the memorandum from the British Legion in Scotland of this vital issue of how long it will be before the Government have a policy?

Mr. Paling: I met a deputation.

Sir I. Fraser: Will the Minister try to give us an answer soon, because there is a lot of anxiety in this matter?

Mr. Paling: I appreciate that, and I assure my hon. and gallant Friend that I am losing no time in this matter.

.Mr. Collins: asked the Minister of Pensions if he will increase the pension of 16s. per week for amputation of leg through calf, for pensioners of the last war, and bring the assessment for this injury into line with that still paid to men similarly disabled in the 1914–18 war.

Mr. Wilfred Paling: As already announced, an expert committee is to be set up to examine the schedule of assessments for specified injuries.

Mr. Collins: Is the Minister aware that the 16s. is worth only 10s. compared with values after the 1918 war? Will he give further consideration to the matter?

Mr. Paling: This committee is to consider all the points.

Oral Answers to Questions — IDENTITY CARDS

Colonel Erroll: asked the Minister of Health if he will state all the purposes for which it is desired to retain civilian identity cards at the present time.

The Minister of Health (Mr.Bevan): As the answer is rather long I will, with permission, circulate it in the Official Report.

Colonel Erroll: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider reducing the number of uses for civilian identity cards as soon as possible, as there is a great deal of public concern on the matter?

Mr. Bevan: Perhaps it will be best for the hon. and gallant Member to read my reply.

Lieut.-Colonel Dower: Is the Minister aware that the retention of these identity cards is strongly resented; and will the right hon. Gentleman provide other methods, so that they will not be necessary?

Mr. Bevan: The hon. and gallant Member should be very well aware that these methods areas distasteful to me as they are to him. They will be discontinued immediately they are no longer of any use.

Following is the answer::

The civilian identity card is an integral and essential part of the system of National Registration established by the National Registration Act, 1939. That Act will come up for review in due course and I am not in a position to anticipate what proposals in regard to it the Government will submit to Parliament. At the present time the National Register is the sole source of the material from which the civilian electoral registers for Parliamentary and local government purposes are compiled and it is proposed to continue that arrangement pending the report of a Committee on electoral matters, the setting up of which was announced recently by the Secretary of State for Home Affairs.

The National Register also renders valuable services to the Minstry of Food and the Board of Trade in connection with rationing of food and clothing, and to the Ministry of Labour in connection with the administration of National Ser vice (Armed Forces) Act, 1939, and the Registration of Employment Order, 1941. Considerable use will also be made of the National Register for the purpose of bringing into operation the new scheme of children's allowances. The register has also proved valuable in re-uniting families which had been separated owing to evacuation and other incidents, for the purpose of tracing individuals whose claims under the War Damage Act, 1941, have not been satisfied owing to their

whereabouts being unknown, and in various other ways of benefit to the individual concerned.

Oral Answers to Questions — LOCAL AUTHORITIES

Rating and Valuation

Mr. Sparks: asked the Minister of Health, in view of the request of the Association of Municipal Corporations in December, 1936, that the whole system of local taxation should be reviewed by a Royal Commission or Departmental Committee, if he will now take that step, in view of the time which has elapsed since the question of local taxation was last inquired into.

Mr. Bevan: I cannot add anything to the reply I gave on 29th November last to my hon. Friend the Member for East Bradford (Mr. McLeavy).

Emergency Services (Stores and Premises)

Flight-Lieut. Haire: asked the Minister of Health, what steps he is taking to dispose of the valuable A.R.P. and other civil defence material deteriorating in storage in various parts of the country; and whether he will also consider an early derequisitioning of the storage premises concerned, thereby saving public funds

Mr. Bevan: A.R.P. and Civil Defence Services generally are the responsibility of the Home Office. Authority to dispose of equipment provided for the Emergency Services for which my Department is responsible was given to local authorities in a circular dated 28th November, 1945, of which I am sending my hon. Friend a copy.

Flight-Lieut. Haire: While thanking my right hon. Friend for the steps he has taken since I tabled my Question about a week ago, may I ask him to pay attention to the number of premises where this material is stored and which are eating up public funds, and will he do his utmost to have them derequisitioned as soon as possible?

Mr. Bevan: I hope that the decision to dispose of the surplus stores will have the effect of making the accommodation available, but obviously it could not be


available until the stores were disposed of.

Sea Defences (Mundesley)

Mr. Gooch: asked the Minister of Health if he will send an official to consult with Erpingham Rural District Council, Norfolk, regarding sea defences at Mundesley, where there is danger of irretrievable disaster to the village unless the erosion is checked.

Mr. Bevan: I authorised the provision of a groyne following inspection in August last. I have before me no proposal from the council for further works, but if they will submit a scheme, I will consider it.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING

Bomb Damage Repairs

Lieutenant William Shepherd: asked the Minister of Health if he is satisfied with the output per man from those engaged on bomb damage repairs; and, if not, what action he intends to take.

Mr. Bevan: New directions to local authorities are now being framed and will be issued very shortly. I will send the hon. Member a copy.

Mr. Manning: asked the Minister of Health if he will make a statement as to his review of arrangements for the execution of war damage repairs, particularly with regard to the organisation set up by the Ministry of Works, which at present forms part of the arrangements.

Mr. Bevan: I am sending my hon. Friend a copy of the circular issued to local authorities on 25th July last setting out the revised arrangements for the co-ordination of all housing work, including war damage repair, in the London Civil Defence Region which I assume my hon. Friend has in mind.

Mr. Manning: Is my right hon. Friend aware that contractors through the Ministry of Works, including men released from the Forces for that purpose, have had their contracts cancelled and are without instructions as to what further useful service they can render in the matter of repairs to bomb-damaged residential premises?

Mr. Bevan: If my hon. Friend will bring to my notice particulars of any

cases he has in mind, I will deal with them, but I know that the House is very anxious that the whole of this system of dealing with war damage repair should be revised. I am hastening to do it.

Mr. Bossom: Would the Minister place copies of all these numerous Regulations and Circulars in the Library for the inspection of hon. Members?

Mr. Bevan: Hon. Members have access to all these Regulations, and the hon. Member has enough Parliamentary experience to know how to use them.

Letting Premiums

Mr. Chamberlain: asked the Minister of Health whether he will consider legislation to make illegal the offering or payment of premiums in connection with the leasing or letting of unfurnished housing accommodation of all categories not at present so covered.

Mr. Bevan: The Inter-departmental Committee on the Kent Restriction Acts recommended repeal of the provision in the Act of 1920, which in exceptional cases allows premiums to be taken but, as I informed the House on 1st November, there will be no opportunity during the present Session for a Bill to give effect to the Committee's Recommendations. I am afraid there is equally no chance of early legislation to deal with the particular point mentioned by my hon. Friend.

Mr. Chamberlain: While appreciating the difficulties to which my right hon. Friend has referred, may I ask him to bear in mind that there is a widespread racket going on all the time in this matter?

Mr. Bevan: That point and other points will be borne in mind in the framing of legislation, but my hon. Friend will appreciate that the House is already fully occupied.

Requisitioned Accommodation

Lieut.-Colonel Hare: asked the Minister of Health why his Department has given instructions for the rent of certain of the people evacuated from the Sudbourne battle area, Suffolk, to be raised, in view of the fact that, before they were evacuated, his Department gave an under taking that they would not be charged a higher rent than they had previously been paying.

Mr. Bevan: A revised Circular is being issued on the question of rents to be charged for requisitioned premises, and I will send the hon. Member a copy. I can not say precisely what will be the effect on the people to whom he refers; but the local authority will consider this, and no doubt if they think that there is a case for a still further discretion than is given by the revised Circular, they will communicate with my Department.

Lieut.-Colonel Hare: Will the right hon. Gentleman give prior consideration to cases in which his Ministry gave written undertakings that the rent would not be raised?

Mr. Bevan: I would like to have particulars of those undertakings, because they are very rarely given in this form. I would appreciate it if the hon. and gallant Member would let me know what they are.

Major Legge-Bourke: asked the Minister of Health what will be the effect on the rateable value of a house in which the local authority compulsorily extends accommodation by providing extra necessary kitchen and other facilities.

Mr. Bevan: It is assumed that the question arises out of Defence Regulation 68cb which empowers local housing authorities to carry out works and to provide fittings, furniture and equipment in accommodation registered under the Regulation. I do not on this score anticipate proposals for increases in rateable values.

Major Legge-Bourke: asked the Minister of Health what role is to be played by the W.V.S. in connection with his plans for the requisitioning of rooms in private houses; and whether this role has been discussed with the authorities of the W.V.S. and has now been made plain to members.

Mr. Bevan: I have no plans for the requisitioning of rooms in private houses. I have asked local authorities to appeal to householders in their areas to make spare rooms available. By agreement with the Headquarters of the W.V.S., that organisation is willing, where possible, to help to bring the appeal to the notice of individual householders by exhibiting posters and, where necessary, by house to house visits. Should it ever be necessary to requisition an under-

occupied house, the W.V.S. would be in no way concerned. The position is being made plain to their members.

Major Legge-Bourke: asked the Minister of Health how many local authorities have received an order from his Department insisting on the payment by tenants who have been directed to the premises in question of full rents under the Rents Act with the alternative of eviction; and how many tenants are affected by these orders.

Mr. Bevan: The circular on the subject of rents to be paid for premises requisitioned or taken for housing purposes, which was issued to all local authorities on 22nd October, has now been revised, and I will send the hon. Member a copy. I am unable to say how many tenants may have their rents affected by the revised circular, but the hon. and gallant Member will see that plenty of time is being allowed for any necessary adjustments to take effect..

Major Legge-Bourke: Will the Minister say why local councils were not consulted before the original order was made, and does he not realise that this order has imposed a means test on all the families concerned?

Mr. Bevan: It is not always possible to consult everybody before issuing a circular. If we did hon. Members would be accusing the Government of undue delay. It is perfectly true that there has been some misunderstanding about the terms of the circular, and I have hastened to revise it.

Rent Tribunals

.Mr. Lipson: asked the Minister of Health whether he has considered the representations made to him by the Sanitary Inspectors' Association that sanitary inspectors are appointed to. the rent tribunals to be set up, cither as members or in an advisory capacity; and will he agree to the request.

Mr. Bevan: I should regard it as un- desirable to appoint to these tribunals persons in the service of local authorities.

Private Builders (Licences)

Sir Harold Webbe: asked the Minister of Health how many tenders for permanent houses in England and Wales have been approved at prices exceeding the limits laid down for licences to private


enterprise builders; and how many have been approved at prices at or below those limits.

Mr. Bevan: 1 would refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for Hornsey (Capt. Gammans) on 15th November.

Subsidies

Captain Gammans: asked the Minister of Health whether he is yet in a position to make a statement on the subsidies which it is proposed to pay to local authorities for working-class houses; and whether comparable subsidies will be paid to private builders who are prepared to erect similar types of houses for letting.

Mr. Bevan: The question of subsidies to be paid to local authorities for working-class houses is still under discussion with their representatives.

Captain Gammans: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the second part of my Question?

Mr. Bevan: The second part of the Question will be answered, I hope to the hon. and gallant Member's satisfaction, when the subsidy proposals are before the House.

Major Tufton Beamish: Will the Minister say whether he does not think that the returning ex-Servicemen, and the many other thousands without homes at the moment, would prefer to have a roof over their heads rather than that nobody should make a small profit out of building a decent house?

Mr. Bevan: I am not aware that any houses are not being built as a consequence of the absence of subsidy. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] Hon. Members opposite want it both ways. On the one hand, they say it is the lack of labour, and on the other they say it is the lack of cash. Which do they want?

Hon. Members: Houses.

Destroyed Houses (Rebuilding)

Captain Gammans: asked the Minister of Health what facilities and priorities the Government are giving to house- owners to rebuild for their own occupation houses which were destroyed by enemy action.

Mr. Bevan: Subject to conditions as to size, the rebuilding of houses which are subject to cost of works payments are given equal priority with new house building.

Building Workers (Class B Releases)

.Squadron-Leader Donner: asked the Minister of Health whether he is satisfied that the release of building trade workers under Class B is proceeding at a satisfactory rate; and if not, what action he is taking.

Mr. Bevan: I am never satisfied with these releases, but I am glad to say that as a result of the efforts of all concerned the number of releases is increasing very rapidly. The total of Class B releases of building trade operatives up to the 15th October was 12,000; by the end of October this had increased to over 20,000 and by 15th November was nearly 30,000.

Building Sites (Capacity)

Squadron-Leader Donner: asked the Minister of Health what is the total housing capacity of the housing estates with roads and sewers already laid on, the full development of which by the owning con tractors and firms was stopped by the war; and what is the present position regarding such estates.

Mr. Bevan: According to particulars furnished by local authorities to my Department in 1943, the approximate housing capacity of privately owned building sites of substantial area in various stages of development at the outbreak of war was 330,000. It is not known how many of the licences issued for the erection of dwellings by private enterprise relate to dwellings to be erected on sites described in the Question.

Squadron-Leader Donner: Is not the delay in this matter due to prejudice and class discrimination?

Mr. Bevan: There is no delay involved in the matter at all, because if these sites are available and in an advanced state of preparation, they can be used for public housing.

Squadron-Leader Donner: Is not the Minister aware that nothing is being done at all?

Lieut.-Colonel Walker-Smith: Is it not a fact that many of these sites which were serviced by private enterprise have been compulsorily acquired by local authorities without any effective result in terms of houses?

Mr. Bevan: Those sites which were, be fore the war, in private ownership would have been in public ownership had the public authorities been allowed to acquire them.

Small Builders (Rural Areas)

Mr. Gerald Williams: asked the Minister of Health if he has made inquiries as to how many small builders who are not in a position to take building contracts for new houses, but who would be able to undertake reconditioning of rural and other houses in England, are available.

Mr. Anthony Nutting: asked the Minister of Health whether he has yet received the Report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee on the avalilability of building labour for rural housing; and what action he is taking to deal with the rural housing problem.

Mr. Bevan: I have asked the Rural Housing Sub-Committee of -my Central Housing Advisory Committee to advise me whether the reconditioning of rural cottages could be carried out without diverting labour from the building of new houses, but I have not yet received their report.

Mr. Williams: In view of the fact that there are 140 such builders in the county of Kent alone, will not the right hon. Gentleman do something to help us in reconditioning rural houses?

Mr. Bevan: If there are 140 builders in the county of Kent available for building, the local authorities will be happy to use them in building new houses, which is what the rural workers want, and not reconditioned tied cottages.

Mr. Nutting: Is the Minister aware that the Leicestershire County Council arc a long way ahead of the Central Housing Advisory Committee, and investigated this question the other day and found that the reconditioning of rural houses would in no way prejudice the supply of building labour available for building new houses?

Mr. Bevan: I have not yet understood that it is the desire of Parliament to substitute a county council report for a Parliamentary report.

Materials and Fittings (Exhibition)

Mr. Bossom: asked the Minister of Health if he will arrange an exhibition of the fittings, fixtures, materials and/or drawings and specifications of all of these, which the Government are ordering in bulk for use during the housing emergency.

Mr. Bevan: Proposals for an exhibition of standard materials and fittings are under consideration.

Mr. Bossom: Will the Minister at the same time quote the prices the Government are paying for each of these, so that we may have some explanation of the abnormal cost of these temporary houses?

Mr. Bevan: I am prepared to quote the price of Government produced goods alongside the price of privately produced goods, if that will satisfy hon. Members.

Cramlington Hostel Buildings

Mr. Robens: asked the Minister of Health whether he is now in a position to make the Cramlington Hostel Buildings available for the Seaton Delaval U.D.C. for temporary housing purposes.

Mr. Bevan: Yes, Sir. I have now arranged for about four-fifths of the hostel buildings to be made available to the Seaton Valley Urban District Council for conversion to temporary housing accommodation

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH

Nursing Service

Squadron-Leader Segal: asked the Minister of Health what steps he proposes to take to encourage the recruitment of ex-R.A.F. and ex-W.A.A.F. nursing orderlies under his new nursing scheme by granting them special facilities for training, in addition to the six months' exemption already allowed.

Mr. Bevan: I am asking the General Nursing Council to consider representations I have received in favour of granting to ex-Service nursing orderlies, in appropriate cases, a longer remission in the period of training for State Registration,


and those who satisfy the conditions will be eligible for the special government allowances available to persons leaving work of national importance who undertake nursing training.

Squadron-Leader Segal: Does my right hon. Friend fully appreciate that many of these ex-W.A.A.F. and ex-R.A.F. nursing orderlies do not wish for any increase in salary but would prefer to have a much longer remission of the period of training, in view of their highly specialised nursing experience during the war and of their high degree of proficiency?

Mr. Bevan: I fully appreciate the points that my hon. and gallant Friend has in mind, but there are nursing authorities whom I must consult on this matter, as I am sure he will appreciate. Indeed, I have received great benefit from the consultations recently, as he knows well.

Mr. Peter Freeman: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that no more maternity cases can be taken into certain hospitals in Monmouthshire be cause of the shortage of nurses; and what steps he is taking to remedy the situation.

Mr. Bevan: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedwellty (Sir C. Edwards) on this subject on 29th November.

Mr. Freeman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that babies are refusing to wait to be born until these nurses are trained, and that many of them are actually going on strike?

Mr. Bevan: My hon. Friend will be aware that I have taken exceptional steps quite recently to recruit nurses, and great improvements have been made. I am glad to say that the number of inquiries has enormously increased.

Tuberculosis Patients (Allowances)

Mr. Messer: asked the Minister of Health if, in view of the fact that the amount expended as allowances under Circular 266T is less than was estimated, he will reconsider the position of those tubercular patients at present excluded from benefit.

Mr. Bevan: These allowances were authorised as a war service measure, and

it is not within my power to vary the present scope of the scheme. All tuberculosis patients will be covered by the provision for disability which forms part of the forthcoming National Insurance Scheme.

Mr. Messer: Does my right hon Friend mean that he has no power to vary or to introduce new Regulations? Is he aware that this means that as soon as an allowance stops it is because the patient is no longer capable of cure, and that it is a sentence of death?

Mr. Bevan: I very much sympathise with the intention behind my hon. Friend's question, but 1 have no power at the moment, and I think it would be unwise to introduce legislation. This point will be assimilated in the National Insurance Scheme next year.

Mental Defectives

Mr. John Lewis: asked the Minister of Health whether he will state the number of patients who are at present in the mental wards of public assistance institutions; and the number of these patients who are receiving treatment of any kind.

Mr. Bevan: On the 1st January of this year there were under the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts 10,550 persons in public assistance institutions or wards of municipal general hospitals approved for the purpose by local authorities under Section 19 of the Mental Treatment Act. On the same date there were 9,852 mental defectives in public assistance institutions which had been approved for the purpose under Section 37 of the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913. A considerable proportion of these patients require only to be looked after; but those needing treatment receive it from the medical officers of the institution.

Mr. J. Lewis: Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that there are a large number of patients in these institutions who are not receiving treatment of any kind, and will he undertake, when bringing in his National Health Bill, to take into account this deplorable situation?

Mr. Bevan: There is, of course, in mental institutions, as in hospitals, a great shortage of both nursing and domestic staffs, and I have recently been taking urgent measures to deal with the short age.

Major Lloyd: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree, from the figures at his disposal, that the number of these unfortunate cases has substantially increased since last July?

Mr. Gallacher: Is the right hon. Gentle man aware that a suggestion was made here last night that their number should be added to from this House, and would he like lo say from which quarter?

Methods of Living (Inquiry)

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: asked the Minister of Health whether he will set up a full public inquiry into the methods of living in this country, with particular reference to diet, processed foods and the use of chemicals in farming.

Mr. Bevan: The diet of the country and technical questions arising in connection with it are kept under constant review, and I am not aware of any reason for setting up so wide an inquiry as that suggested.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he realises that he is Minister of Health, and that until we get down to the health of the people all the housing plans he has in hand will not be any use?

Mr. Bevan: I must also ask the hon. and gallant Member to-be precise in his language, because what "a full public inquiry into the methods of living" means, I do not know.

Water Supplies

Mr. Dye: asked the Minister of Health, in view of the fact that there are 377 rural parishes without a piped water supply and five urban districts with an inadequate supply in Norfolk, what steps he proposes to take to co-ordinate plans for an adequate supply of pure water for the whole county in the most economic, efficient and speedy manner.

Mr. Bevan: The water supply problem in Norfolk is difficult, owing to the scarcity of adequate sources and the wide areas to be supplied. A technical advisory committee comprising representatives of the county and district councils and statutory water undertakings has been formed to advise on the co-ordination of schemes. A number of schemes are under consideration and my officers will give the authorities every assistance within their power.

Mr. Dye: May I ask my right hon. Friend, in view of the great need for developing rural supplies, whether the large number of water pipes used in London and other cities for fire lighting purposes could not be made use of in the development of water supplies in the rural areas?

Mr. Bevan: I doubt very much whether those pipes would be suitable in most cases for (he purpose the hon. Gentleman has in mind, but I am sending out to local authorities a new circular asking them to push forward with their schemes in readiness for the labour which will be available next year.

Mr. Dye: Are the people who made these pipes now making pipes for development in rural areas?

Mr. Bevan: I can assure my hon. Friend that I am as anxious as he is to get these rural water supplies organised, because it will be useless to build houses in rural areas if they have no water supply.

Mr. Dye: asked the Minister of Health, in view of the dropping of the Bill promoted by the Wisbech Water Company, what steps he proposes to take to develop a more satisfactory supply of water for that part of West Norfolk and the Isle of Ely.

Mr. Bevan: The Bill promoted by the Wisbech Water Company has not yet been withdrawn, but I am informed that the company do not intend to proceed with if. I understand that I may shortly expect to receive alternative proposals under the Water Act, 1945, from the parties concerned and I propose to await their proposals before taking any further action.

Mr. 'Williamson: asked the Minister of Health how many villages in the County of Lincolnshire are without a piped water supply; and what information he can give with regard to proposed future development under the provisions of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Act, 1944.

Mr. Bevan: The information in my possession relates to parishes as a whole and indicates that the number of parishes without piped water supplies are as follows:

Parts of Lindsey 
…
60


Parts of Holland
…
1


Parts of Kesteven
…
233

With regard to future development, schemes have either been prepared or are being prepared by the water authorities concerned for the extension of piped supplies throughout the rural areas in the three counties.

Medical Practices (Government Proposals)

Mr. Somerville Hastings: asked the Minister of Health whether he is now pre pared to offer any advice to doctors, de mobilised from the Forces, as to the purchase of a practice.

Mr. Bevan: The Government have not yet finally decided upon the proposals which they will be submitting to Parliament for a National Health Service. They believe, however, that it will be incompatible with the provision of an efficient service that the future exchange of medical practices, and the creation of new practices, within that service should be left entirely unregulated and that no effective steps should be taken to secure a proper distribution of doctors to fit the public need. They appreciate that intervention in this field— in whatever form it may take— will probably have the effect of preventing the sale and purchase of the practices of doctors taking part in the new service, and the Government therefore think it right to give warning of this probability at once and in advance of the formulation of their full proposals.
At the same time, and in order to allay the natural anxieties of doctors already in practice or now coming into practice from the Forces or elsewhere, the Government wish to make it clear that there will be an appropriate measure of compensation to doctors in respect of loss of capital values directly caused by the new arrangements. It is intended that discussions should be undertaken immediately with the profession's representative with regard to the steps to be taken to give effect to this decision.

Mr. Hastings: Has my right hon. Friend got any suggestions for the men returning from the Forces as to what occupation or what branch of the profession to take, if they are not to buy practices?

Mr. Bevan: I think the House will appreciate that it is very difficult to frame precise proposals ahead of legislation in this matter. What I have done has been

to inform doctors that it is highly improbable that I will permit the sale and purchase of practices in future— [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Certainly, I have already said, subject to the proposals laid before Parliament. However, arrangements will be made with the medical profession immediately in order to deal with individual difficulties of doctors returning from the Services.

Mr. Willink: Is the right hon. Gentle man aware that this vague and menacing statement will cause the greatest possible anxiety and distress among a section of the population to whom the good will they have built up is their major asset? Is the right hon. Gentleman further aware that many of his present colleagues in the Government agreed that this was a matter of great complication and not essential to the introduction of a National Health Service, and can he expand what he means by the method of regulating the distribution of doctors?

Mr. Bevan: I have every reason to believe that the announcement I have just made will be received with great satisfaction by most doctors; that most of the best elements of the profession regard the sale and purchase of practices as extremely undesirable; and that they will be very glad indeed that I am about to discuss with them the conditions in which this practice is to cease.

Captain Baird: does the answer also apply to the dental surgeons?

Mr. Bevan: No, Sir.

Colonel Stoddart-Scott: Does the reply mean that doctors who can no longer purchase practices will no longer be able to choose in what part of the country they wish to practise? Does it mean that they will be directed or posted in future?

Mr. Bevan: I think the hon. and gallant Member had better await the full proposals.

Major Lloyd: In view of the most alarming and dictatorial policy which has been announced, I beg to give notice that I will raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Mr.Speaker: As the matter involves legislation, it is bound to be out of Order on the Adjournment.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Non-teaching Work

Mr. Yates: asked the Minister of Education if she is aware that, despite the circulars of her Ministry of 8th December, 1941, and 9th November, 1944, there is still a burden of non-teaching work pressing upon teachers and hampering their real educational work; and if she will re quire educational authorities to appoint persons to undertake such work and remove this hindrance to the progress of education.

The Minister of Education (Miss Ellen Wilkinson): Yes, Sir. I am aware that teachers still carry a burden of non-teaching work and I am very sorry about it. Education authorities are, of course, in a difficult position owing to the present manpower shortage. Since the issue of the circulars mentioned by my hon. Friend, two other circulars have been issued—in January and March of this year—with special reference to the need for relieving teachers of work, other than that contemplated in Section 49 of the Act, in connection with school meals and milk. Regulations have been made requiring local education authorities to employ a suitable and adequate staff other than teachers for this purpose. It is moreover the practice to take up with individual authorities any cases revealed by inspection or otherwise in which insufficient action appears to have been taken to afford relief to teachers. Any authority which may have overlooked the Ministry's repeated exhortations will, I hope, be reminded of the importance of the matter by this Question and answer, which I propose to circulate.

Mr. Yates: While I much appreciate the reply of my right hon. Friend, may I ask if she realises that there is a widespread opinion in the educational world that the amount of time which is at present being spent on the provision of milk and meals for schoolchildren is really having a detrimental effect on their education?

Miss Wilkinson: I think the proper answer to that is, "You're telling me."

Mrs. Manning: Has the Minister taken any steps to recruit younger members of the Forces suitable for these important and ancillary services in the schools?

Miss Wilkinson: We are doing as well as we can, but the hon. Lady will under stand that, in all these things, we have to

take it up with the Minister of Labour, who is working on very well understood priorities. We are doing our best, and that is really all we can do.

Emergency Training Colleges, Wales

Mr. George Thomas: asked the Minister of Education how many emergency training colleges she hopes to have established in Wales by the end of 1946; where they are likely to be established; and what will be the total number of students involved.

Miss Wilkinson: I hope to establish at least three emergency colleges in Wales by the end of 1946, each of about 200 students. One college opens at Wrexham in about two months' time, and there is a prospect of another at Llandrindod Wells. I cannot say yet where it may be possible to establish any further colleges.

Mr. Thomas: Is the right hon. Lady aware that more than half the population of the Principality is in industrial South Wales, and that neither of the colleges mentioned would cater for that population?

Miss Wilkinson: They would certainly cater for it. These colleges are not local in respect to the new students which they draw, but we have tried to find premises near Swansea or Cardiff, although, so far, we have been unsuccessful.

Leaving Age (Additional Teachers, Wales)

Mr. G. Thomas: asked the Minister of Education how many additional teachers are estimated to be required in Wales when the school-leaving age is raised to 15.

Miss Wilkinson: Approximately 850.

Nursery Schools, Wales

Mr. G. Thomas: asked the Minister of Education if she will state the number of education committees in Wales which do not provide nursery school accommodation; the total number of nursery school places available in Wales; and the total number of qualified teachers employed in nursery schools in Wales.

Miss Wilkinson: Eleven local education authorities in Wales are not at present providing nursery school accommodation. The nursery schools recognised in 1940 provided 680 places on prewar


standards; additional nursery school places will be provided in so far as existing wartime nurseries become nursery schools. Up-to-date figures for the qualified teachers employed are not available, but staffing has hitherto been generally at the rate of one qualified teacher to each forty children.

Anglo-Russian Understanding

Mr. Osborne: asked the Minister of Education if, in view of the importance of Anglo-Russian understanding, she will consider making compulsory the teaching of the Russian language in secondary schools and also arrange for an exchange of teachers between this country and the U.S.S.R.

Miss Wilkinson: It is not my practice to prescribe the languages to be taught in the schools. However, I intend shortly to issue a circular recommending to local education authorities and governing bodies a development in the teaching of Russian. I shall be happy to consider an exchange of teachers with Russia as soon as conditions make this practicable.

Mr. Pickthorn: Can the right hon. Lady tell us whether she intends to take the same steps in regard to the Chinese?

Miss Wilkinson: If there is a demand, I will certainly take it into consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions — IMPERIAL ROUTES (DEFENCE)

Mr. Henry Usborne: asked the Prime Minister if, in view of Clause C, page 25 of Cmd. 2768, which reports the Imperial Conference of 1926, it is still the implication that the responsibility for defending the routes which connect the sovereign self-governing States of the British Commonwealth rests solely upon the resources of His Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom; and whether he is prepared to inform the Dominion Governments that the land, sea and air forces required to defend these routes could still be provided from the man power and revenues of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison): The Report of the Imperial Conference of 1926 did not state or imply that the responsibility for defend-

ing the routes which connect the self-governing countries of the British Commonwealth rests solely upon the resources of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. It has not been, and is not now, the policy of the United Kingdom Government to supply the whole of the manpower for, nor bear the whole cost of, the defence of these routes.

Mr. Usborne: In view of the far-reaching implications of that reply, may I give notice that I intend to raise this matter on the Motion for the Adjournment?

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTHERN IRELAND GOVERNMENT (CONSULTATIONS)

Flight Lieutenant Haire: asked the Prime Minister how far the Northern Ireland Government have indicated that they are prepared to follow their traditional step-by-step policy with the pre sent British Government; and what machinery he proposes to set up to ensure full collaboration between the two Governments.

Mr. H. Morrison: What legislative or administrative policy shall be followed in Northern Ireland under the powers conferred by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, or by any subsequent Act of the United Kingdom Parliament, is a matter for the Government of Northern Ireland and for the Parliament of Northern Ireland, to which that Government is responsible. There has been at all times and continues to be the fullest consultation between the two Governments on matters of common interest, and I see no necessity to make any additional administrative arrangements for this purpose.

Flight-Lieutenant Haire: In view of the state of politics in Northern Ireland, could my right hon. Friend take steps to see that the pernicious misrepresentation of the policy of His Majesty's Government in Northern Ireland by some of the hon. Members opposite is stopped?

Mr. Morrison: With great respect to my hon. Friend, that doctrine would be, constitutionally, quite improper. This Parliament has conferred powers of self-government, within a wide sphere, on the people of Northern Ireland, and having done so, the Government of the United Kingdom really cannot interfere with them.

Sir Ronald Ross: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the Press today the Vice-Chairman of the Labour Party has held up the Government of Northern Ireland as an example of enlightened government— [Interruption.] Read "The Times."

Earl Winterton: On a point of Order. May I call your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that the original questioner commented upon the Government of Northern Ireland? Is it in Order to do that in this House?

Mr. Speaker: The Lord President of the Council gave the answer to that.

Earl Winterton: But is it in Order, Mr. Speaker, for an hon. Member of this House to comment upon the Government of a Dominion?

Mr. Speaker: No, it is not.

Mr. John Beattie: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that the Government of Northern Ireland have declared that they will not slavishly follow the Socialist Government, and will the right hon. Gentleman use that powerful influence which he has to see that the working classes of Northern Ireland benefit by legislation of this House through the medium of a Socialist Government?

Mr. Morrison: The Socialist Government of Great Britain have no right to compel, or to seek to compel, the Government of Northern Ireland to follow, slavishly or otherwise, the policy of the Government of Great Britain.

Sir R. Ross: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I think this Question is now at an end.

Oral Answers to Questions — AUSTRIA

Postal facilities

Lieut.-Colonel Rees-Williams: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he is aware that the Red Cross message scheme, by which persons in this country were enabled to communicate with their relatives and friends in Austria, ended six months ago; and whether he will arrange for some method of postal communication to take its place.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Hynd): Yes, Sir; arrangements are in hand and are virtu-

ally completed for the resumption of postal facilities between Austria and the outside world.

Archduke Robert

Captain Bullock: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how it was that the Archduke Robert travelled recently, in French uniform, from the Tyrol to the British-occupied zone in Austria and addressed a political meeting without the British authorities being aware of his presence.

Mr. J. Hynd: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the incident in August last when the Archduke Robert succeeded in crossing from the United States zone to the British zone in Austria under an assumed name, wearing the uniform of a French officer. He left 48 hours later by the same route. Inter zonal boundaries in Austria are controlled as strictly as available manpower permits. Naturally, however, there are attempts to evade the controls and the Archduke's uniform doubtless facilitated his illegal entry into the British zone.

Captain Bullock: Does not the Minister consider it highly undesirable at the present moment that Hapsburgs in disguise should enter Austria for political purposes?

Mr. Hynd: As I have indicated, the Archduke Robert left the zone by the same route as he entered it within 48 hours, and instructions were given to the military authorities that in the event of any similar escapade occurring again, immediate action should be taken against anyone who was infringing the arrangement.

Mr. Warbey: Will my hon. Friend make it clear that it is the policy of His Majesty's Government to uphold and support the law of the Austrian Republic forbidding the entry of claimants to the former Hapsburg throne, and will he make representations to the French Government urging them to adopt the same attitude?

Mr. Hynd: That hardly arises from the Question, but I think I can assure the House that the policy of His Majesty's Government is to see the establishment of an independent Austrian Government, which will have charge of these matters, as soon as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions — EMPLOYMENT

Staggered Holidays

Wing-Commander Roland Robin-son: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is now in a position to announce what action he will take to secure a spreadover of holidays, as recommended by the Catering Wages Commission.

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Isaacs): I am not yet in a position to make a statement on this matter, but I hope to do so at an early date.

Mine Workers

Mr. Frederick Willey: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is now in a position to make a statement regarding men who were released from the Forces to work in the mines.

Mr. Isaacs: No, Sir, but I hope to be able to make a statement within the next fortnight about the position of these and other men who were released indefinitely from the Forces for civilian employment during the war.

Control of Labour

Mr. Butcher: asked the Minister of Labour whether, after his consultations with the Joint Consultative Committee, representative of the Trades Union Congress and the British Employers' Confederation, foe has arrived at a decision as to the continuance of the exercise of the powers of direction under Defence (General) Regulation 58A (1) and the Control of Engagement Order, 1945, or on the question of the revision of age limits now applied under that Regulation and Order.

Mr. Isaacs: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) and my hon. Friend the Member for West Lewisham (Mr. Skeffington) on 22nd November.

Mr. Butcher: But is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this afternoon we have had enough of the direction of doctors, and why should the rest of the community remain in doubt as to their future?

Unemployment Statistics

Mr. Murray: asked the Minister of Labour how many unemployed males and females were registered at the Dur-

ham, Spennymoor and Crook Labour Exchanges for the months of September, October and November, 1944; also for the months September, October and November, 1945.

Mr. Isaacs: As the reply includes a table of figures,. I will, if I may, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Murray: Is the Minister aware that in this district the male population are terrified lest there should be a recurrence of 1914–1918, and is he also aware that nine females to one man have been employed in some of these factories? Can he do something about it?

Mr. Isaacs: The hon. Member put down a Question as to the figures, and I have given him an answer. I will look at the other point he mentioned.

Following is the reply:

For the period in question unemployment figures are available only for 16th October, 1944, and 15th October, 1945. The following table shows the number of insured persons registered as unemployed at the Durham, Spennymoor and Crook Employment Exchanges at these dates. A further count of the unemployed was made on 12th November and statistics for that date will be sent to the hon. Member as soon as they are available.

—
Durham.
Spenny-moor.
Crook.


16th October, 1944:





Males
137
83
70


Females
45
67
16


15th October, 1945:





Males
414
598
261


Females
947
1,192
431

The above figures are exclusive of insured men on the registers who had been classified as unsuitable for ordinary employment. At 16th October, 1944, these numbered 182 at Durham, 46 at Spennymoor and 118 at Crook. At 15th October, 1945, the corresponding figures were 153, 94 and 111.

Personal Cases

Mr. Yates: asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware that a certificated school teacher who has been working under tribunal direction is at present receiving unemployment insurance at a


Birmingham Employment Exchange; and, in view of the shortage of teachers, if he will make the necessary arrangements to have this man placed as a school teacher.

Mr. Isaacs: If my hon. Friend will let me have particulars of the case which he has in mind, I will make inquiry into it and communicate with him.

Mr. Yates: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the man in question has actually been receiving unemployment insurance for the past six weeks and, when he is considering the matter, will he take some steps to see that men with such ability, of whom the nation is in urgent need shall not be forced to be idle in this way?

Mr. Isaacs: If my hon. Friend had given me the particulars when he put down the Question, the matter could have been investigated and decided upon.

Mr. Manning: asked the Minister of Labour why the epileptic person, identity Y.A.U.A. 1744855, concerning whom he has received a letter from the hon. Member for North Camberwell, has been refused registration at his local employment exchange on the ground of ineligibility through having no abode, though in possession of an identity card stating an address; and what steps will be taken to remedy this situation.

Mr. Isaacs: I am making inquiries into the case of the person mentioned in this Question, whose particulars I have just received from my hon. Friend. As soon as the inquiries arc completed, I will write to him.

Mr. Manning: Will my right hon Friend consider issuing a special instruction to the exchanges under his Department, as to the need for careful treatment of people such as epileptics?

Mr. Isaacs: Until I have the facts, I cannot say whether a special instruction is necessary. We are very anxious to see that these disabled persons get all the care possible.

Transferred Workers

Mr. Shurmer: asked the Minister of Labour, in view of the reduced wages of many transferred workers, if he will consider the issue of an extra railway warrant to enable them to travel home for this, the first peacetime Christmas.

Mr. Isaacs: Workers transferred by my Department are eligible for two cheap travel warrants available at any time during the calendar year, including periods of public holiday such as Christmas.

Blind Persons (Training Allowances)

Sir I. Fraser: asked the Minister of Labour if he will extend the training allowances now payable to fit ex-Service-men and the disabled who are training under Government schemes, to war- blinded persons training at St. Dunstan's and the Scottish National Institution for Blinded Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen.

Mr. Isaacs: My power to pay training allowances to or in respect of disabled persons is applicable where the training is being given under arrangements made between my Department and the persons providing the training facilities. I shall be glad to consider making an arrangement with either of these organisations if that is desired. No request for such an arrangement has, so far as I am aware, yet been made.

Mine Ballotees

Mr. Yates: asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware that John Baker, 54, Alston Street, Ladywood, Birming ham, was again sentenced to one month's imprisonment on 3rd December for re fusing to obey the National Service officer and work in the mines; and if he will take steps to prevent a recurrence of such sentences of imprisonment.

Mr. Isaacs: I am calling for an early report on this case and will write to my hon. Friend as soon as I have the facts before me. The penalties awarded, within the limits laid down, for failure to comply with directions given by a National Ser vice Officer are a matter for the courts.

Mr. Yates: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that this young man, after being sentenced to one month's imprisonment, was later employed by a firm of building contractors until he was sentenced to a second term in prison, and in such cases will he consider some kind of alternative to these harsh sentences of imprisonment?

Mr. Isaacs: I regret that I must ask the hon. Member to bear in mind what I said earlier, that if he had put all the facts on the Paper, I could have dealt with the Question.

Wing-Commander Robinson: asked the Minister of Labour whether arrangements can be made for boys directed to the mines to receive leave at Christmas so as to visit their families.

Mr. Isaacs: Arrangements for holidays in the coalmining industry, as in industry generally, are a matter for joint agreement within the industry itself.

Wing-Commander Robinson: Is the Minister aware that these boys, whose labour is conscripted by the Government in peacetime, only get an opportunity of going home once a year, and will he consider the question of their receiving Christmas leave, and exercise his influence to help them?

Mr. Logan: May' I ask the Minister whether, in view of the sacrifices many of these young lads have made voluntarily for work which they do not want to do it is not necessary that they should have the power of returning home?

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Will the Minister have a word with the trade union concerned to see what they have to say about it, and keep their point of view in mind?

Oral Answers to Questions — DEMOBILISATION

Building Operatives

Sir H. Webbe: asked the Minister of Labour whether it is required to amend the arrangements for release of building operatives under Class B by permitting such operatives themselves to apply for release and encouraging builders who desire to employ them to make application for them.

Mr. Isaacs: No, Sir.

Art Students

Mr. Mc Adam: asked the Minister of Labour if he will consider granting release, from the Forces of former arts honours students who had completed part of their university training at the time they were called to the Forces before granting deferment to young men of 18 and 19 years of age who wish to take an arts degree.

Mr. Isaacs: The arrangements in force provide for the release in Class B of arts students in release groups up to 49 who had obtained open scholarships to a

university before joining the Forces. I regret I am unable to extend these arrangements.

Mine Workers

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: asked the Minister of Labour if he has considered the pronouncement by the national production officer of the Mineworkers' Federation, of which he has been in formed, concerning the release of ex-mineworkers under Class B and the powers of revocation still held by commanding officers; and whether he will clarify the position of miners in the Services who desire release under Class B.

Mr. Isaacs: Yes, Sir. It does not lie either with the man to apply for release or with his commanding officer to with hold release in Class B. The Ministry of Fuel and Power invited employers to furnish the names of all ex-underground coalminers for whom production work was immediately available. Those names have been forwarded to the Service Departments, who are in process of offering Class B release to the men concerned.

Mr. Walkden: But is my right hon. Friend aware that here and there there are odd cases in the coalfields where men find it very difficult to negotiate their return to the coal face? Will he tell commanding officers, generals, field-marshals and everybody else, so that a man who is willing to work at the pit and get coal can go back to the coal face right away?

Mr. Isaacs: I am not prepared to go outside the regulations already laid down, which have been fully explained to the industry and, I hope, to members of the Services.

Agricultural Workers

Mr. Stubbs: asked the Minister of Labour if he has given further consideration to the granting of Class B release for men employed in the agricultural industry.

Mr. Isaacs: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave on 4th December to the hon. Members for Salisbury (Major J. Morrison), Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), and Barnstaple (Brigadier Peto), a copy of which I am sending him.

Mr. Stubbs: Is the Minister aware that farmers and farm workers were delighted at the release of 10,000 men under Class B?

Lieut.-Commander Gurney Braithwaite: Is the Minister not yet convinced of the necessity of widening the definition of key men for agriculture?

Mr. Turton: Will the right hon. Gentle man publish the instructions he has given to the Service Departments about the compulsory release of these Class B men?

Mr. Isaacs: I will certainly look into that. As to the question of key men, we are being advised by the appropriate Department, and I want to assure the House that there is no attempt being made to whittle down this arrangement, but to extend it.

Oral Answers to Questions — MILITARY SERVICE

Deferment, Scotland

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: asked the Minister of Labour if, in the case of Scotland, he will extend until 3rd January the concession he has already made in the calling up dates of persons due to report during the Christmas season.

Lieut.-Commander Clark Hutchison: asked the Minister of Labour whether, having regard to the fact that New Year's Day is a public holiday in Scotland, he will arrange with the Service Departments that the temporary deferment of intake of men shall continue in force until 5th January.

Mr. Isaacs: I am unable to extend the concession until 5th January, but I am arranging that men living in Scotland shall not be asked to report before 3rd January.

Policy

Commander Maitland: asked the Minister of Labour when he anticipates it will be possible to give definite information as to the length of military service which is to be imposed on young men now being called up.

Mr. Isaacs: I regret that I am not in a position to make any forecast as to when it will be possible to make a statement. The period of service of these young men will depend upon a number of factors at present unknown, but I can

assure the hon. Member that the Government are fully alive to the importance of making an announcement as early as possible.

Commander Maitland: Docs the right hon. Gentleman realise that he is preventing these young people from making any plans for their future, and that this is entirely due to the Government's policy of "don't know" and "shan't tell" which seems to be their main theme?

Oral Answers to Questions — WASHING MACHINES (SUBSIDIES)

70. Mr. De la Bère: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the difficulties of housewives with large families who have to do all their own work, he will consider subsidising all electric washing machines to enable families to utilise these modern conveniences.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Dalton): No, Sir.

Mr. De la Bère: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that, although this may seem a ridiculous suggestion, an electric washing machine is an all important part of the domestic life of this country?

Mr. Dalton: Yes, Sir, but there must be a limit to subsidies from the public Treasury.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTERS (OFFICIAL RESIDENCES)

72. Major Lloyd: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer which Ministers are now wholly or partly living in official premises, apart from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the Admiralty; and to whom, and how much, rent is paid in each case.

Mr. Dalton: The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs occupies official premises, for which no rent is charged. The Secretary of State for Air resides in official premises, for which he is charged a rent of £300 a year; the Minister of Town and Country Planning resides in official premises, the rent for which is now under consideration.

Major Lloyd: In view of this unusual precedent for peacetime, has the right hon.


Gentleman worked out, and, if so', will he inform the House, what these perquisites amount to?, Is it not a fact that they would involve a salary of [HON. MEMBERS: ''Speech."]

Mr. Dalton: We believe in following tradition where the tradition is sound. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) occupied, very properly, premises in the Foreign Office, for which, I understand, he never paid rent. I regard this as a very reasonable arrangement, and we are continuing it at the present time.

Oral Answers to Questions — EXCHANGE CONTROL (JOURNALISTS)

Major Hugh Fraser: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why British journalists returning from the Continent are not permitted to exchange their foreign remunerations for sterling, or to retain them, and are further instructed by Government officials to remunerations abroad.

Mr. Dalton: If the hon. and gallant Member will send me particulars, I will look into the matter. We have arrangements for exchange control with several continental countries to prevent black markets in the various currencies.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Churchill: May I ask the Leader of the House the Business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison): I am not in a position to announce the Business for next week at the moment, but I hope to make a statement at the end of today's Sitting.
I should inform the House that we expect to have news regarding the Washington negotiations later this evening. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister pro poses to make a statement to the House, and it will be necessary for us to propose a Motion later for the suspension of the Rule covering the Adjournment Motion, so that the House can sit until 11.30 p.m. if necessary. In the exceptional circum stances, I hope that the House will be agreeable to this arrangement. It may be convenient for me to inform the House that we propose to adjourn for the Christ-

mas Recess on Thursday, 20th December, and meet again on Tuesday, 22nd January.

Mr. Molson: In view of the complexity of the whole question of the Washington agreement, will the Leader of the House give an undertaking that the House will not be called upon to take a decision on the agreement as early as next week?

Mr. Morrison: Perhaps that question could be put tonight, when I make a statement on next week's Business.

Sir Wavell Wakefield: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the promised Debate on civil aviation will take place before Christmas?

Mr. Morrison: I should think that it is very unlikely.

Mr. Butcher: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the heavy pressure on Parliamentary time, and consider curtailing the Christmas Recess, so that many important outstanding subjects may be discussed?

Mr. Morrison: I am only too conscious of the lack of Parliamentary time. I would not like to shorten the Christmas Recess, because I think that it is necessary, for the good and wellbeing of Ministers and hon. Members and their constituents.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Ian Fraser: Can the right hon. Gentleman say at what time The Debate will be initiated this evening, on this special matter?

Mr. Morrison: There will not be any Debate, and I cannot be quite sure about the time of the statement, but I should think that it would probably be about 10.30 p.m.

Mr. De la Bère: Will there be an interruption?

Mr. Kirkwood: May I ask the Leader of the House if he is making provision for a Debate regarding the naval bases at Rosyth and the Clyde? Are we to get that before the Christmas Recess?

Mr. Morrison: I think that the hon. Member must await some ordinary Parliamentary opportunity to raise that subject. I see no chance whatever of being able to give special time out of the Government's time before the Christmas Recess.

PLYMPTON ST. MARY RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [Lords]

Reported, with Amendments, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills (with Report on the Bill).

Bill, as amended, and Report to lie upon the Table; Report to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS

That they have agreed to—

Civil Defence ('Suspension of Powers) Bill, without Amendment.

That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to amend the Government of India Act, 1935, as respects the effect of Proclamations of Emergency under Section one hundred and two of that Act." —[India (Proclamations of Emergency) Bill [Lord ].

Orders of the Day — GOVERNMENT POLICY (MOTION OF CENSURE)

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [15th December]:
That this House regrets that His Majesty's Government are neglecting their first duty, namely, to concentrate with full energy upon the most urgent and essential tasks of the re-conversion of our industries from war-time production to that of peace, the provision of houses, the speedy release of men and women from the Forces to industry, and the drastic curtailment of our swollen national expenditure and deplores the preoccupation of His Majesty's Ministers, impelled by Socialist theory, with the formulation of long-term schemes for nationalisation creating uncertainty over the whole field of industrial and economic activity, in direct opposition to the best interest of the nation, which demands food, work and homes.

Question again proposed.

3.20 p.m.

Mr. Churchill: We are here today on a Motion of Censure, but it is not the Opposition who have introduced acrimony into our proceedings. When we met for the first time four months ago, we refrained from conflict. I pointed out that there never had been a Parliament in which there was so great a body of work to be done in which all had an equal interest, or of legislation to be passed to which all parties were committed. Ideological differences may be deep and wide, but I certainly hoped that there would have been a very bread and continuing measure of co-operation upon practical tasks, and that these would have priority. We therefore did not divide upon the Address in reply to the Gracious Speech, and the Leader of the House taunted us the oilier day for not having done so. I went out of my way, perhaps further than I should have gone, to mitigate any shock to our credit abroad which might have been caused by the Government's announcement of the nationalisation of the Bank of England, only to be derided by the Leader of the House for speaking in less alarmist terms than I had done in the heat of the Election.
Throughout we have done our best, even when we did not entirely agree, to make easy and nationally united the course of foreign politics. The Prime Minister found it convenient to refer appreciatively to this in


his speech to the American Congress. But when the Government insisted upon keeping on for five years by legislation all the extraordinary controls, which even in the heat of war we only renewed from year to year, and when they rejected our friendly proposal for a two-year period, they showed that they were imbued with the spirit of faction. They showed a desire to humiliate their defeated opponents, and a desire to have every economic detail of the social life of our country held in a war time grip indefinitely, and obviously for purposes far beyond those of the transition from war to peace. The Leader of the House actually complained, as no man charged with the duty of leading the House of Commons has ever done in my recollection, that we were not having enough first-class rows. The whole attitude of the Leader of the House, seconded by the Minister of Health—I hope he will be allowed out of his dug-out before I finish—is to offend, wound, injure and provoke those over whom they have got so great a Parliamentary majority, but who nevertheless represent half the nation, and will shortly represent a large majority out of doors.
The Prime Minister may not be aware of all this, though he has had a long and intimate experience of the personalities and methods of both the Ministers to whom I have referred. The Prime Minister has not sought in any way to embitter or inflame our proceedings. Perhaps he will have to hurry up and toe the line this afternoon, but he has no interest in doing so. The Prime Minister's prevailing interest must be the success of his Administration. He does not need to grind his personal axe, and will probably be content if he can keep hold of it. We are, therefore, glad he is here and safely back. It is my first submission to the House and the country that the Government, through their leading mouthpieces in the House of Commons, and through their aggressive policy, (have deliberately sought to aggravate the division which unhappily exists in our country, and that not only their policy but their methods and their manners are intended to provoke and exacerbate. That is my first submission.
There is another theory which may be put forward to explain the Government's behaviour, or the behaviour of the Minis-

ters who have acted in this way. They are under heavy pressure, behind the scenes, from their extremists to do more and go faster even than they themselves think possible. Unless they can show they are hurting, injuring, provoking their political opponents, they will not be able to placate their wild men, or control some odd elements that nestle under their wing. If that be so, they may at this moment be congratulating themselves on this Motion of Censure, and rejoicing that they have lured us into their trap. What ever the explanation may be, it leaves the Government convicted of the offence of faction for faction's sake, at a time when they have an immense duty to perform, and when they need the help of all parties for their large spheres of activity at home and abroad.
Last night the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. Nally) drew an affecting picture of my personal position; the noble stag was dying, the curs were at his throat; his own friends behind him were hogs: and the hon. Member spoke of the pathos and tragedy of the scene. Let me reassure him that so far as my personal feelings are concerned, I only remain in politics because I think it my duty to try to prevent the great position we won in the war being cast away by folly, and worse than folly, on the morrow of our victory. The hoots and howls of the curs—the hounds, as the hon. Member for Bilston put it—do not worry me at all. So long' as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm. I must say that the maiden glance of the hon. Member for Bilston at the House of Commons should impress us somewhat with the unfavourable impression we produce upon him. Here are hogs, there are hounds. I trust that a longer experience of this Chamber will make him realise that both those branches of the animal kingdom have their virtues. I am not at all worried about anything that may be said about me. Nobody would attempt to take part in controversial politics and not expect to be attacked.
What I am deeply distressed about is the state of our affairs and the prospects ahead. Our economic plight is not only grave, but extremely perplexing. We have the enormous administrative task to fulfil of repatriating and demobilising the Armies, and changing over to peacetime


industry. The housing shortage for the returning troops gapes upon us. Conditions are hard, the authority of the responsible trade union leaders is challenged in many disquieting ways. Abroad, our relations with the United States have become more distant, and those with Russia more obscure. We are told the Big Three are never to meet again, which I heard with great grief. As for the five Foreign Secretaries who were to prepare so many-things, all that seems to have fallen through. The condition of Europe is a nightmare. Fateful and difficult decisions await us in India.
I am not blaming the present Government for all this. The greater part was inherited, in the consequence of the war and in our faithful, unstinted and prolonged exertions for the common cause. But I wonder what would have been said if a Conservative or even a National Coalition Government had been in office and had no better showing to offer than what we see at present. Why should the Government choose this moment of all others in our history, or their life, to proclaim great new departures in political theory, and why should they try to stir far-reaching changes in every mode of thought and every walk in life? Why should they raise this great schism of militant Socialism in the land, and divide us with what must involve increasing bitter ness and lack of mutual comprehension with every further step they take? Can we afford an internal struggle of such a character, at such a time? Could there be a worse occasion for deep-seated organic changes in the life of Britain, now when she is exhausted and overburdened in a fearful degree? Certainly it is a moment peculiarly difficult. One would have thought we might at least have been allowed to recover normal mentality, that we might let people regain their ordinary homes after these strenuous years, and that at any rate there would have been reasonable restoration of our national life, before we were weakened and torn by the bitter political and social strife into which the Government or some Members of the Government seek to plunge us.
Certainly it was a very difficult and harassing inheritance for the new Ministry, but it was also a noble opportunity. Especially was this so after the swift defeat of Japan had cleared the way for the great steps of release and liberation and of

transition from war to peace. If the Labour Party could have done this well, the country, realising all the difficulties of the task, would indeed have awarded them the meed of lasting praise. Why can they not, even now, set aside every impediment, and concentrate upon the splendid though formidable task which they have demanded and obtained from the nation the right to discharge? Alas, it is primarily a partisan and doctrinal triumph which they seek, and not that fame and honour which would come to them from a great national task rapidly, efficiently and brilliantly executed. It is upon them that the responsibility must lie for the growing division and consequent weakening of the nation. It is they who are the innovators, they who are the disturbers.
I should have thought that the first endeavour of responsible Ministers would be to secure the greatest measure of co-operation between all parties and all forms of national activity. I do not mean a coalition, but a concerted effort. It would take all our united strength to make our way out of the dangers and embarrassments by which we are surrounded and to give the masses of the people, who have done so well and endured so long, a fair chance of renewing their lives after the harsh sunderings of war. If I had obtained a substantial majority at the last Election my first thought would have been to seek the co-operation of the minority, and gather together the widest and strongest measure of agreement over the largest possible area. Very different is the treatment which has been meted out to us, and which has already produced party antagonism, bitter as anything I have seen in my long life of political conflict. I charge the Government with deliberately trying to exalt their partisan and faction interests at the cost not only of the national unity but of our recovery and of our vital interest. There is the foundation and the gravamen of this Motion of Censure.
For my part, I believe profoundly that the attempt to turn Great Britain into a Socialist State will, as it develops, produce widespread political strife, misery and ruin at home and that, if this at tempt involves nationalisation of all the means of production, distribution and exchange—to quote the orthodox phrase which I understand was reaffirmed at the Labour Party meeting in May —then this


island will not be able to support above three-quarters of the population which now inhabits it. Not only is this the worst time for such experiments, but this country is the least fitted of all large communities to endure such a convulsion. I was pointing out the other day how intricate, delicate, complex and pre carious are our methods of gaining a living in a hard competitive world. We are not like Russia with its vast oceans of land to develop. We are an old, and, since the population expanded so largely, highly artificial country, more like Venice which built an empire on piles driven into the lagoons, or like Holland whose dykes keep out the sea, or like Egypt whose life is the Nile and irrigation. Here we have 48,000,000 of people and more than half of them must be fed from afar. Surely a measure of common prudence should regulate the actions of the British Government and restrain their triumph over their fellow countrymen.
I wish now to speak of the effect of these political party and ideological antagonisms, which the Government have caused, which I fear they feel it necessary to their internal vigour to foment, upon all the vast processes of trade and manufacture by which alone we live. Let me make it clear that it is the duty of every man in this country, wage-earner or employer, to do his best for the welfare and survival of the nation from day to day, irrespective of his political views or dislike or fear of the administration. If the bitterness which Socialist politicians are injecting into party and party life were to find its counterpart or its ally in the whole relations of capital and labour throughout the land, our misfortunes' would accumulate with a hideous momentum. Every effort must be made by capitalist employers, in every form of private enterprise, to do the best possible for their businesses and for the country under the conditions which prevail. They must not allow themselves to be deflected by the hostility shown to them and their class and their functions by Socialist Ministers. They must seek for the utmost possible production of which they are capable and which is permitted to them.
The Government for their part also have to face realities. If industry and enter prise are weighted down by colossal con-

fiscatory wartime taxation it will not be able to revive. If industry and enterprise are fettered, hampered and hobbled at every step by an ever-spreading network of controls and regulations, and if every act of commerce is first to take taxation into account, and secondly, to obtain the innumerable permits required, there will be a vast loss or even arrest of energy at a time when we can least spare it. We have had all kinds of Governments in Britain, but never in this commercial trading island a Government which set itself out to stigmatise, and so far as they dare to eliminate, as if it were an abuse or even a crime, the profit motive by which the commercial affairs of the vast majority of human beings in almost every land have been regulated since the dawn of civilisation. There has never been a Government which set out to revive our properity on such a confidence-killing, impulse-sapping theory as that. Undoubtedly, if the warfare which the Government are carrying out against their opponents in Parliament is extended to the class and interest they dislike in industry they will, at this most critical juncture in our national existence, enforce an enormous handicap upon the whole productive, inventive and resilient element inherent in our race and culture.
I will now deal with the affairs of the four Ministers who are directly responsible for the key departments at home— the Minister responsible for demobilisation, the Minister responsible for housing, the Minister responsible for trade and the Minister responsible for our national solvency. Here my complaint touches not only failure through political prejudice, but failure through a lack of confidence and lack of management which has already slowed down the whole movement of the Government machine, except where partisan and doctrinal stimuli are at work. Surely the taproot of everything is demobilisation. Have the Government justified themselves upon this great task or not? We know well that they have changed their minds. Their original scheme, put forward with all their authority, has proved by their own ad mission and corrective action to be utterly out of relation to the problem. Very considerable concessions have been wrung from them by pressure which they resent, and by criticism which the Minister of Labour— who ought to be grateful—described as mischievous and irresponsible.
What are the facts to-day? What is the first fact which stares us in the face? There are still upwards of 4,000,000 per sons detained by compulsion in the Armed Forces of the Crown. At what rate is this enormous total being reduced? We have been told that a rate of 12,000 a day has now been developed and will be maintained till the end of the year. That is certainly an improvement, but why, then, are we to prepare ourselves for a contraction of this rate to less than 9,000 in the New Year? Why in the New Year, when transport ought to be more abundant and there has been a long time to make arrangements for using transport efficiency? I ask specifically that this drop from 12,000 to 9,000 at the turn of the year should be prevented. I ask specifically that that step should be taken. What are the Americans doing? My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttleton), in a massive and weighty opening speech yesterday, mentioned that in the three months after the end of the Japanese war the Americans demobilised at the rate of 35,000 a day. They are now demobilising at the rate of 50,000 per day as compared with 9,000 a day to which, we are told, unless something is done about it, we are to conform in the New Year. There is no excuse for our not demobilising at the same proportion ate rate as the United States. They are 2¾ times as numerous as we are, but their demobilisation is 5½times as fast, in fact double the British rate. As my right hon. Friend said, there is really no excuse for this. The distances over which the Americans have to repatriate large masses across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are undoubtedly far greater in man miles than those with which we are concerned, having regard to the" immense body of troops in this country, and other great bodies separated from us only by the distances from Italy and Germany to this island.
No one would object, at the present time, to any man or woman being kept in the Forces who wishes to stay on, or for whom there is a job to do. But in the circumstances with which we are confronted, is it not absolute madness to keep very large numbers of people against their wish, on full pay and at great expense, doing nothing,' or toiling at artificially invented work? How will it help comparatively small bodies of men in the Far East, who have, to some extent to lag

behind in demobilisation through failures in the Ministry of War Transport, to know that for each one of them, eight, nine 01 ten men in England, Italy or Germany are 'kept needlessly crunching the gravel of the barrack squares or gathering seaweed by the salt sea waves? What advantage can it be to us a year hence, to have kept many hundreds of thousands of men and women on the treadmill of compulsory idleness for one, two, three, four, five or even six months extra? Anyhow, a year or 18 months hence, even on the Government's programme, they will have been released. What will it have availed us to feel they have stood about all this time, making up at our expense, a sense less accumulation of man-days of uniformed unemployment?
On the other hand, how great is the need for these men and women. On every side, the cry for more labour arises, not only for key men but for the great body of soldiers, airmen and sailors who arc longed for in their homes and needed in their jobs, which are often waiting for them. I am well aware there is a counter case to this. I say, let the two cases be considered one against the other, and it will be only too plain where the balance of national advantage lies. We must do what I called the other day the greatest good to the greatest number. The Government have already departed, in important respects, from the Bevin scheme. Let preference in obtaining employment—I use the word preference deliberately, be cause my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Lonsdale Division (Sir I. Fraser), who is so much in touch with the British Legion and other bodies, says this is what they really care about—let preference in obtaining employment and other compensations be awarded to men retained, not deliberately but because of transport shortage or transport mismanagement beyond their proper order of release. But set the great mass free and above all set the women free as soon as they can be spared, f have never admitted for a moment that the principles of the Bevin scheme have an application in regard to women. If a woman is needed to allow a man of higher category to be released, it is another matter, but, to keep women needlessly, just because of tidiness, is, at this juncture, the quintessence of super-idiocy. I rest, in this matter, on the decisive figures that in January the Americans will be demobilising 50,000


men a day and we 9,000. That figure has a vital bearing on world recovery, and on our position in world markets at this peculiarly difficult moment.
I turn to home industry. President Truman told us last week that within 60 days of the end of the war with Japan, 93 percent. of the munitions industry of the United States had already been converted from war to peace conditions. That is a prodigious fact; not only because of its static but even more because of its dynamic significance. What proportion of our munitions industry has been reconverted? It must be remembered that the end of the Japanese war meant much less to us and the end of the German war meant much more to us proportionately than to the United States. At the end of September, when America was 93 percent. converted, we were only 43 percent. Much vital time was evidently lost, to judge by the number of men and women still employed on supplies and equipment for the Forces, and by the end of this year, the Government hope to achieve 72 percent. reconversion. I recognise the improvement, and I under stand the difficulties, but it certainly is an astounding fact that, even at the end of this year, we shall be employing 670,000 more workers on making obsolete weapons of war, or adding obsolete weapons of war to the enormous piles, 'the mountain our piles, which exist more than six months after the German war is over, that we should be employing 670,000 more people than in the summer of 1939, when all these horrors were about to break out upon us.
Apart from the waste of labour, look at the waste of materials and fuel, light and power. I would rather give the people leave, than that they should be made to waste materials as well as insult their own souls and the honour and dignity of labour, by doing absolutely useless treadmill work. At any rate, whether in the demobilisation of the Armed Forces or in the reconversion of the munitions industry, there is an un doubted need for far greater effort, exertion and efficiency than we are receiving now and every spur like this Motion of Censure should be applied to the Government who, after having held out enormous expectations, have produced results,

so meagre and disappointing as to lead us, day by day, nearer to disaster.
I come next to housing. I am glad to see the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health has emerged from the recess and taken his place on the fire-step. Contrary to the advice of the great Lord Bacon in his "Essay on Public Offices," the Minister of Health is consistently reflecting on his predecessor and dilating on the legacy of muddle and incompetency he has inherited from Mr. Sandys and Lord Portal. No doubt it is an attempt to excuse himself in advance, from the impending failure of his own administration. I do not deny that the right hon. Gentle man inherited a legacy from the past. It is a rich legacy of achievement and preparation. This legacy he has squandered with a jaunty profligacy which has rarely been equalled by a Minister who has still to make a reputation. Taking all the difficulties of the years between the wars, the British housebuilding industry grew in strength and efficiency until its output, in relation to the size of the population, was greater than that of any other country in the world. This highly developed housebuilding machine, and the network of well-equipped manufacturing industries which support it and are almost inextricably interwoven with it, are part of the right hon. Gentleman's legacy.
The policy of the Coalition Government —not a Conservative Government—was to enlist the help of all housebuilding agencies of every kind. In addition to the emergency factory-made temporary-houses, and to the normal houses built by local authorities, we intended, as soon as we were free from the day to day burden of the war at its peak—as soon as we got the men—to mobilise the full experience, initiative and organisation of the independent free enterprise house builders, including the small builder, and to produce lower priced houses both to sell and to let. The present Government, however, have decided to deny all financial assistance to this very important section of the building industry, and to restrict their scope in all directions. Everything, in fact, is being done to make it more difficult for the independent builder to produce any large number of houses, and to place him at a disadvantage in relation to the heavily subsidised local authority. Moreover, when it comes to the allocation of labour and materials, the independent house-


builder is evidently to be kept at the back of the queue. Government supporters, new-comers and experienced Parliamentarians alike, had better face this blunt fact. Without liberating, using, and encouraging the private, capitalist, profit seeking, housebuilding industry to the full, as well as all other agencies, the housing problem will not be solved, and the people will suffer.
The Minister of Health, having decided to stake all on the local authorities, would surely do well to give them more practical evidence of his confidence in them. At present, they are, so I am told, ham strung and restricted at every turn by the involved procedure of licences and approvals which have to be obtained from Government Departments, before the first brick can be laid. If free enterprise house building is to be chilled and checked to the utmost, cannot the local authorities be given the freedom to get on with the overwhelming task which has been piled upon them? Housing was put in the very forefront of the Labour Party's election campaign. Socialist speakers up and down the country told the electors that their party would know how to build houses at a rate undreamt of under Conservative administrations.
If the Labour Party is returned to power, housing can be dealt with in a fortnight.
According to the "Western Daily Press" of 23rd June, this was uttered by the President of the Board of Trade. [Interruption.] Well, he must have said something, you know.

The President of the Board of Trade (Sir Stafford Cripps): The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right. I said some thing, but not that.

Mr. Churchill: The right hon. Gentle man is very prudent in not endeavouring to inform us of the actual words, which he undoubtedly did use, and which were of so sanguine a nature as to give the impression that he was jumping at office like a dog at a bone. "Five million houses in quick time," was the promise of the Foreign Secretary. Let us see what progress there is to report. Until the German war was over and the builders were released, no Government could have produced any substantial number of completed permanent houses. We should, however, have expected to see by now signs of permanent house building start-

ing up on an appreciable scale through out the country, whereas, as every one knows, it is still a very rare event to see a permanent house in course of construction.
The Minister of Health has allowed four months of excellent building weather to slip away. Instead of helping the house building industry to start up again, he has been what is called "shadow boxing,'' against his own pet bugbear. All his opponents are racketeers, profiteers, monopolists, ring makers, and no doubt it may be that in a short time we shall be called also Fascist beasts. We have not come to that yet. Instead of tackling this essentially practical task in a responsible and objective manner, he has been swayed at the start by partisan spite and prejudice and by the hope of exploiting these vices to his own personal political ambitions. Both the industry and the local authorities have been waiting for a precise statement of the Government's policy and programme. Instead, the right hon. Gentleman's repeated evasions and vague threats have created a haze of uncertainty and suspicion, destroying confidence and paralysing initiative. Not only has he deprived himself of the most experienced sections of the housebuilding industry but he has insulted and discouraged the great building societies, who, before the war, did so much to help people with small means to buy their own homes. All their historic work at a time when thought was not at all advanced on social subjects is dismissed as mere money lending.
While the right hon. Gentleman de livers lectures about the need for low housing costs, he has allowed the Cripps temporary bungalow to creep up to a price beyond the maximum which he allows for a full-size permanent brick house. He has callously discarded the Rural Housing Act, which provided financial assistance for the reconditioning of cottages for agricultural workers. In stead, he promises at some unspecified date to build prefabricated skyscrapers over the countryside. The right hon. Gentleman threatened us the other night with the disclosure of certain scandals if we asked questions about figures— "putrefying corpses," he called them—for which his predecessors, presumably Mr. Sandys and Lord Portal, were responsible. It is his duty to produce these facts. We cannot have a Minister of


Health living among a lot of putrefying corpses. Anything would be better for these ex-Ministers, I am sure, than receiving a favour from the right hon. Gentleman. I am sure they would say with the great Duke of Wellington, when he was blackmailed by a harlot, "Publish and be damned." No doubt inspired by their colleague's example, the Minister of Works and the Minister of Supply have been busily spreading doubt and dismay throughout the whole of the building materials industry. They have announced in an airy fashion that they intend to go in for the manufacture and distribution of building materials in a big way, a ruthless State competition with the existing industry of the country. When this important announcement was made the building materials manufacturers over a very wide area of production had still not been informed of the articles they were to be expected to produce, or what materials the Government themselves intended to manufacture. In these circumstances it will not be surprising if materials and components of the right kind are not ready when they come to be needed.
The Government have reaffirmed the policy which I declared in my day of tackling house building with the vigour of a military operation. I stand by that. The first essential of a military operation is to decide upon your objective. The Government have never made up their mind on the number of houses they hope to build by given dates, or, if they have, they are ashamed to publish the figure. The Minister of Health said, indeed, in one of his expansive and informative moments, that in the first 15 months after the war he would build very many more houses than were built by the Coalition Government after the last war. He did not mention, I notice, that the Minister of Health during most of that period was his colleague in the present Government, Lord Addison, who was sacked for his performance; nor did he mention that in the 15 months following the 1918 Armistice only about 1,000 houses? Were built throughout the land. Of course, if that is the yard stick by which the Government are going to measure their achievements, they certainly will not be accused of aiming too high.
The main difference between the situation now and the situation in 1918 is that the late Coalition Government, profiting by the experiences of the last war, made many of the necessary preparations for re starting house building long before hostilities ceased. Does the Prime Minister wish to pass a Vote of Censure on him self? I am speaking of the Coalition Government, of which he was a most important Member, and I think it is true to say that many of the necessary preparations were made long before hostilities ceased. The result was that when the war came to an end last summer most of the essential legislation was already passed, and great numbers of actual building sites had already been cleared or approved and in many cases were already in course of development. The objective of the Coalition Government was to provide 300,000 permanent houses, built or building, within two years of the end of the German war. This programme was ridiculed by the Lord Privy Seal before the Election. He called it "chicken food." However, now that the election is over a new name is required, and the Minister of Health presents us with the term '' crystal gazing." From chicken food to crystal gazing. All these tactics will be ex posed by events at no distant date, and I say today that unless the right hon. Gentleman changes his policy and methods and moves without the slightest delay, he will be as great a curse to this country in time of peace, as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war.
The course of my remarks now reaches the President of the Board of Trade. Everyone knows the distinguished talents which the right hon. Gentleman brings unstintedly to the services of his fellow-countrymen. No one had made more sustained exertions to contribute to the common pot and few take less out of it than he does. I have got ray vegetarian too, my honoured friend Lord Cherwell. These ethereal beings certainly do produce a very high level and a very great volume of intellectual output, with the minimum of working costs in fuel. When I learned that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had been sent to the Board of Trade I thought to myself, "If he will only deal with this mighty business in a matter-of-fact, practical spirit, to produce definite results in a comparatively short space of time, he may render an enormous service


to us all and even get us round the corner." I have not yet abandoned my hopes, though certainly up to the present moment his career at the Board of Trade has not only been disappointing to his friends, but disastrous to us all.
The right hon. Gentleman must dismiss from his mind the idea that it is within the power or thought of any human being at the present time, in the present organisation of society and with the present nature of man, to regulate in detail the entire movement and process by which our 48,000,000 people can earn their daily bread. He must clear his conscience of the awful question he has to ask himself so many times a day, "In giving this or that decision, am I betraying Socialism or not?" If he would only rid himself of these obsessions and inhibitions he could still be of great value to the fortunes of Britain. Human beings, happily for them, do not have to direct all their bodily functions themselves. They do not have to plan in advance how many heartbeats they are to have in the next 24 hours or what relation their temperature or blood pressure would bear to those heartbeats. They do not have to decide, as a part of the daily routine, what secretions are to be made by the liver or kidneys. No official quota is set for lymph or bile. Otherwise I fear the President of the Board of Trade would find he had over drawn his account very much. Providence has relegated these problems to the subconscious mind and left the commanding sphere to human reason.
Let the President of the Board of Trade reassure himself. We can breathe without him, if he will permit us. The country will never be without its volitions and impulses if only the Government will let it start. I assert that the revival of this country is at this moment being stopped, stifled, even strangled, by the resolve of the Board of Trade, followed by other cognate Departments of the Government, to regulate everything. Why can they not realise that the impulse and volume of national productive ingenuity and progress is overwhelmingly greater and far more fertile than anything that can be produced by Government officials or party planners? If the right hon. Gentleman would only realise the limitations of beneficial Government functions, if he would not harden his heart, like Pharaoh, and would set the people free, half his problems would at least end themselves. From

every side we hear the complaint that the hands of initiative and enterprise are tied, and that permits have to be obtained for everything even in the smallest details.
The President of the Board of Trade is trying to teach all the trades in the country how they should get back their business. He is rapidly gaining half-knowledge over a vast field. He wishes to hold everything gripped and frozen until he can form a general view and reconcile that view with the orthodox tenets of his Socialist religion. Mean-while, the days, weeks and months are slipping away. It was with a chill that I read that in the second quarter after the end of the German war, our exports had not leapt up as enormously as one had hoped, but had actually fallen below the level of the previous quarter. I hope there is an explanation for that. With the highest ideals, with the finest intelligence and the best intentions, the right hon. Gentleman may inflict upon this country injuries which will long last and will, as they bite deeper, bring ever greater hardship to the mass of the weekly wage earners whom he sincerely desires to help.
The right hon. Gentleman has greatly disheartened, and still more severely hampered, the productive commercial energies of our people, and his Socialistic tenets have exercised an undue bias upon him in all his work. After all, so far as we know, in the next two, three, four or five years, the Government must rely upon private enterprise for between 80 and 90 percent. of their entire production from which the Chancellor of the Exchequer draws his revenue, and an even higher proportion rules in the export field. Why, then, harry and maltreat these thousand and one delicate and complicated productive processes? What is the use of adhering to a system of 80 percent. Private enterprise for the next five years, and then declaring that the profit motive is a form of moral delinquency? Fancy a Government in a position of such economic peril and stress relying for 80 per cent. of the national production upon private enterprise, and then setting themselves to denounce and, if possible, destroy the mainspring 01 private enter prise and, one of the main tests of its efficiency generally, private profit and general consequential benefit. The right hon. Gentleman propounded an argument


from a sentence of mine taken from the report of my speech some days ago:
Whoever thought of taking the home trade for export until the home market was satisfied?
I never uttered such a sentence as that. The right hon. Gentleman got it from "The Times," and in these days of paper shortage all reports are telescoped. This particular jumble was made out of several sentences and bears no relation to any thing I have said or to anything which had a coherent meaning. I will not weary the House with what I actually did say, because "The Times" newspaper has printed the proper text, but I stand by what I said, and it in no way contradicts any other statement I made about the vital importance of the export trade at the present time, or the exceptional and fleeting opportunities which may be opened in that field. All these matters are very urgent.
I referred a little while ago to Mr. Truman's statement. There is another point which should not be overlooked. President Truman said that by the middle of 1946 the metal working trades of the United States would be producing by June next year two and a half times their 1939 rate—by "rate" I presume is meant "volume"—of output of consumer goods. There is not a single peacetime manufactory in Britain which will be producing 100 percent., and many will be far short of 60 and 70 percent. at that date. All this has its bearing on our power to reoccupy or retain the markets we have long held, and by which we have paid for our vital imports. The matter is very urgent indeed. We can see what the competition is going to be from this mighty community across the ocean, in all the neutral markets and markets on which we depend for our very daily bread.
Coming to this business of planning, the President of the Board of Trade, sup ported by his colleagues, demands a nationalised, planned, economic, social and financial policy. No one will deny that the Government have a great part to play in modern life and international trade. I stand by my declaration of 1943, some part of which was quoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan) yesterday. But are there not some very large questions which require State plans and Cabi-

net decisions, of which we have not heard much? Instead of devoting their energies to questions of ownership and of day-to-day fiddling with the multitudinous activities of this island I would invite the Ministers to pay some attention to the real economic problems facing this country and to try to formulate some plan for their solution. What, for instance, is their wages policy? There are economic arguments for keeping wages down and there are social arguments for letting them rise, although one thing is certainly wrong, and that is to allow decisions to be reached haphazardly and disconnectedly, as is apparently taking place now. If the Government believe in planning, let them plan here.
Then there is the export problem. In stead of upbraiding the motoring industry, why does not the President of the Board of Trade take the responsibility for evolving an export policy of his own and relating it to the internal trade of the industry, an internal trade sufficient to sustain it, and put his plans forward for everyone to see? The only plan that I have heard put forward was received with howls of "Tripe" from his assembled hosts—a form of hospitality which I cannot recommend and cannot commend, and which, in any case, would be of no use to him. What do the Government plan in capital policy? From where are the resources coming for all the projects of industrial development and much else that are in the air and that are being spoken of? A Government can usually raise money and can always print it, but the labour and materials represented by the money come in a different category. Labour and the savings of the community are the key. The prewar unemployed have been absorbed, and possibly some of the women who have been drawn into industry will stay. We shall be very lucky if we have as much as a million more at work than we had in 1938.
How, then, do the projects which are afoot relate to our resources? How can our resources and saving power be expanded and be made more fertile in order to meet our resources? The comments of the planners upon this situation would certainly be of interest and possibly of value. We have had no information, nor even sensible statement, from Ministers on any of these matters. The beginning of our story is the release of manpower.


The end of our tale is finance. When we come to the discussions on the Budget next year, it will be necessary to unfold in a searching manner what other countries undoubtedly already know, namely, our most difficult financial position. Ours is the only country which was for almost six years in the war and which fought with its utmost strength in the workshops and in the field through all that awful peril. Very early in the days of the National Government the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, raised direct taxation as a war time measure to -levels never attempted by any other modern society and to levels which cannot be surpassed, because on the higher ranges of income the amount is a complete confiscation. Every other form of taxation was also raised, and the financial conduct of the war stood at a level of strictness and severity unequalled in any other country or at any time. It is quite impossible that such scales of taxation should be maintained after the dire compulsions of war have passed away.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has certainly clone nothing to give confidence to the taxpayer or the investor, and, if he will allow me to say so, he has shown an altogether undue and unpleasant propensity to win party cheers by grinning and gloating over harsh financial measures. He speaks as if he had an in come of £5,500,000,000 a year from which he has been graciously pleased to make an independent gift to the nation in his interim Budget of a net £90,000,000, and next year, no doubt, there will be a further benefit to come. But in the main, he plans to maintain the wartime taxes as a permanent feature of our economic life. It will be vain to look for trade revival or for the return of a general measure of easement or wellbeing in the nation as a whole. First of all, the right hon. Gentleman who holds the proud position of Chancellor of the Exchequer should insist upon the return of the man power to civil life, and strike these millions of men and women off the useless charge account of the State. Next he should aim at giving to the taxpayer large scale and massive relief, both direct and indirect, both small and large. He should force the President of the Board of Trade to stimulate internal production as well as export trade, and thus secure at all costs some output in goods and desirable

Commodities to absorb the hard won savings and purchasing power of the people. Perhaps he would not get so many cheers for this as he does in his policy of soaking the rich, so far as they exist, but a year or two hence he may win a reward in the respect of those who are acquainted with his problems and in the obvious relief in the life of the broad masses of the people. No reduction of taxation can be secured apart from a great reduction of expenditure.
Is it not a shocking thing—and this is one of the elements which led us to our Motion—that out of £5,500,000,000 provided by Parliament for the purposes of Cull scale war against Germany and Japan in the present financial year, only £200,000,000 should be saved when the war will have lasted for the equivalent of three or four months only out of the 12? Of course, if you keep one and a half million men drumming their heels when they should be recreating our vanished wealth it is easy to cast away the public treasure. However—this is a very small divagation—there is one economy which has been effected, and which might well have been dispensed with, and that is the £500 which the Government have secured by selling Hitler's bust to a parcel of malignant crackpots. I think that with all the millions flowing out, we might have denied ourselves that small appropriation in aid. Of course, if trade and industry are so hampered, disturbed and alarmed that their life thrust is diminished or arrested, it does not matter how high the taxes are pitched, the revenue will gain no advantage, or gain an advantage in an inflated currency alone.
We shall hear tonight what the Government have settled about the American loan. I trust, indeed, that agreement has been reached, but this above all other things I would say: Such a loan would give us, at the best, a couple of years' easement in our vital and primary import needs. We should be buying two years of grace, but for what? To set our house in order and to get our life energies on the move. If the Government are to borrow from the United States, and if strict terms are imposed by the United States, all the more is there an obligation upon Ministers to deal with our affairs upon their merits and on the dead level, and to clear away all this party and doctrinal trash and rubbish in these


perilous days. Otherwise we shall come to the end of these 'two years with uncommon swiftness, and find ourselves in a position most hateful, namely, of being dependent upon the kindness, which may or may not be forthcoming, of a foreign Power.
As Leader of the Opposition, I have a very difficult task to discharge. I cannot bear to see so much squandered that has been so hard won, without making an effort to reverse the process. The Government reproach us with making their task more difficult, but what do they expect? Can we, with our convictions, as honourable men, as a great party in the State, afford, for the sake of appearances of unity, to acquiesce in a destructive downward trend in all our affairs at home and abroad? Arc we not bound in honour to give our warnings in good time about the future, and to record our censure on the present? Would we not be blame worthy before history if we sat supine and silent, while one folly and neglect is piled on top of another, and much that we fought for together is lost or frittered away? The only excuse for silence and inaction would be despair, and despair is not to be tolerated among Britons. Moreover, I am as firmly convinced as I was in 1940, that we have our future in our own hands, that we are still "masters of our fate and captains of our soul." But reflecting on all we have overcome, and, by the mercy of Providence, survived, I cannot believe that we shall find ourselves destroyed by incompetence or partisanship. In order that Great Britain may enjoy the glory she has won, and deserved, I call upon all who value her name and fame to drive home, before it is too late, by a Vote of Censure, the hard truths of the time upon a quite well-meaning, but misguided and inactive Government.

4.33 p.m.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee): The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition opened today on a quiet note of injured innocence. We were the people, according to him, who had driven this public-spirited Opposition into putting down a Motion of Censure, we were the people who had driven a wedge between the parties in the State. I have not forgotten the right hon. Gentleman's broadcast at the beginning of the Election, nor have the people of this country.

That was when any partisan tone was introduced, and I have also had the plea sure of reading the right hon. Gentleman's speech the other day to his party. It was a very different style of speech from that which we have had this after noon. The burden of the right hon. Gentleman's speech is this: He said: Why, when you were elected to carry out a Socialist programme, did you not carry out a Conservative programme? To the right hon. Gentleman everything that is Conservative is normal, anything that sees a changing world and wishes to change it must be wrong. We are always asked to rally round, to be patriotic and keep things as they are. We were not returned for that purpose.
The right hon. Gentleman earned, rightly, the respect of this country as a great man who inspired our fighting Forces. Today, quite rightly, on a Vote of Censure, he is coming forward as a partisan and his speech, although studiously couched in terms to suggest that he was only considering the good of the country, was, in fact, an entirely partisan speech. Anybody who differed from him was following some fetish, but whenever he spoke and whenever he suggested we should carry on the good old Conservative policies, he was speaking for the nation. We do not accept that.
I have seen a number of Motions of Censure in this House and I have moved a good number myself, but this is a very peculiar one, when one looks at its origin, because the right hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest that the Opposition had been stung to action by the attitude of my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council, and stung to action by the Government having extended certain necessary Regulations, after a great many other Regulations had been swept away, from two years to five years. The Motion of Censure did not arise out of that at all. As a matter of fact, its inception was due to an incident in this House when the bowling on the Opposition side had been temporarily entrusted to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton). Unfortunately, the occasion was a statement, not announcing a new and extended programme of Socialism— that we have already had in the King's Speech—but stating exactly where the limits of that programme were to be, and reassuring private enterprise that it could


go ahead because they were not being taken over. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot bowled a few wides; he was then no-balled by Mr. Speaker for trying to deal with matters of legislation upon the Adjournment, and he got a severer reproof from the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg). There-after, it became quite a critical position. The young Conservatives were followed up by a Member of light and leading, the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter) who passed some very unpleasant comments, I understand, at the Conservative Conference. He is, as we know, a faithful exponent of one who has been described as the conscience of the Conservative Party, though himself not exactly a still small voice—Lord Beaverbrook. Faced with this problem obviously some thing had to be done. There was discontent. I have known it before in my time, the criticism of the back benches against the front benches.
The first idea was to follow up the line of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot and have an attack on nationalisation, but it was thought better to deck this rather academic sentiment with a few references to general discontent which would give all Members of the Opposition some talking points. Meantime, the right hon. Gentleman had, at the Conservative Party meeting, given the key note. We all agree that it is a good thing to have an active and well-knit Opposition and, therefore, I am not the least surprised that this opportunity has been taken, and no one will grudge the Opposition a couple of days to get together.
The main attack has been delivered against the Socialist policy on which we stood at the Election, but, before dealing with that issue, 1 would like to say a word or two about some of the trimmings. The right hon. Gentleman gave us a great survey. He dealt with a number of subjects. My only regret is that he was not there dealing with those subjects at the proper time. He dealt with finance. We have just had a Finance Bill. We have had a Budget, and all those points could have been made most effectively there. There have been many Debates on housing. Why could not these points have been made then? There have been Debates on trade and industry, and plenty of Debates on demobilisation. It would be better if these were made on

the regular Debates which come along in the House. His followers could have done their cheering not just once a fortnight but every day in the fight in the House, and the appropriate Minister would then have got up and answered it. But we have had this kind of omni bus Motion. I do not intend to deal at any length with the Board of Trade questions. I think—and I think most people think—that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade dealt very effectively with them.
I would like to turn, therefore, first of all, to a matter which the right hon. Gentleman has made the basis of his whole position, and that is, demobilisation—a very difficult and dangerous question, and no one knows more of its dangers and difficulties than the right hon. Gentleman opposite. I heard him half a dozen times describe the scenes which took place at the end of the first world war. What he told me then made a deep impression on me. I and my colleagues in the General Election campaign took every opportunity to stress the need for sticking closely to an agreed scheme. [Interruption..] Take any speech I made, and hon. Members will find that I said that. In his book, "The Aftermath," the right hon. Gentleman described graphically how fatal was the cost of yielding to the clamour of interested per sons to release particular categories of men. The House of Commons was then full of representatives of big business interests and they clamoured for the men they wanted. Unfortunately, the scheme was based mainly on, what? On the release of key men. On just what the right hon. Gentleman has been putting up: Do not worry about the feelings of the men, you must get on with trade and industry. The right hon. Gentleman says in his book:
The prime object was, naturally, the re starting of industry, and questions of the feelings and discipline of the troops themselves were not accorded proper weight.
What was the result? Chaos, mutiny, dangerous scenes everywhere. The right hon. Gentleman had to face them, and he did face them, and he did meet them. Let us just see how he met them. He adopted certain proposals. He sets them out in his book. First of all:
Soldiers as a general rule should only be released from the Front in accordance with age and length of service. Everyone must take their turn in accordance with this order


That is precisely what we are doing; that is precisely the plan that was adopted, with the strong support of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, by the Coalition Government. I have not heard—I have listened to a number of speeches—any experienced ex-Serviceman in this House, from either side of the House, suggest that it is wise to depart from it. And yet the complaint against it is that you must not stick to that plan. If you have people idle in any way, then rush them out, no matter what the feelings of the men. The second point of the right hon. Gentleman was that the pay of the Army must be increased. Fortunately, the Government of which we were both Members took steps to increase pay, without waiting for a mutiny. Thirdly:
Young lads must be retained compulsorily and sent abroad, to release the men who have fought
Again, precisely the policy we are following. The right hon. Gentleman claims, with justice, that those measures restored the situation. We pledged our word to the troops. Now we are urged to depart from it. I say that if the right hon. Gentleman were in office and if he had the responsibilities of troops overseas in many parts of the world—in pretty critical and unpleasant situations many of them—I am quite certain that he would do nothing to suggest that the Government were breaking their word. He would be the very first to insist upon sticking to the plan. I know, from abundant letters from men overseas and from others, that they demand not immediate return; they demand a just and equitable scheme of demobilisation. The right hon. Gentleman was responsible at the end of the last war. He laid down that scheme. Let us see what he accomplished. He took, I think, a justifiable pride in his achievements. He says that, for a period of nearly six months we managed an average of 10,000 a day discharged to civil life. A very good record. Seventy thousand men a week. Yet this despised Government that is said to lag so far behind, well, we are doing 12,000 a day, 100,000 a week, and that is going to continue, I tell the right hon. Gentleman. It is not ending at the end of the year. It is being carried on. On his own showing—

Mr. Churchill: We are glad to hear that quite clearly. We do not drop from 12,000 to 9,000 at the end of the year?

The Prime Minister: We are carrying on, on the rate.

Mr. Churchill: The 12,000?

The Prime Minister: Yes. I am pointing out to the House that at the present we are doing better, very much better, 12,000 against 10,000, than what he said he did. What was the position at the end of the last war?

Mr. Churchill: I think I was responsible for the Army alone.

The Prime Minister: I do not think so. The men there were much more easily brought across. They were only just across on the Continent. The difficulties of shipping were nothing like what they are today. I claim, therefore, that this is very largely a stunt. In the same way, Class B releases were difficult. The right hon. Gentleman found at the end of the last war how difficult it is to have special releases for special men without upsetting the rest. We have been working on that principle, the application of which has been improved. The right hon. Gentleman rather sneered that we had managed to alter things. After all, we have to watch events and see how they move, shipping changes and the like. There has been a constant acceleration of the demobilisation programme; it has been stepped up, and it is being stepped up again today. In the same way, Class B releases were largely held back through the unwillingness of the men to accept it, but conditions have now been made better, and the releases are actually today between 10 percent. and 15 percent. of the Class A.
I claim that just here is one of the points where I should like to have more of the spirit of which the right hon. Gentleman talked, that is of all trying to help in this difficult situation. In a matter of this kind there are thousands of people with their family feelings, thousands of troops longing to get home. It does not rest with anybody to make vague statements about "incredible slowness" and all the rest of it. It is not merely a matter of home policy, either. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that one of the things that hampered the Government immediately after the last war was that they had not any troops to send anywhere. The whole thing was in a state of flux. We have to be very careful in


dealing with these things, and look at the foreign situation as well as the home situation. These releases are being done on a carefully-thought-out plan, I must say a much better plan than at the end Of the first world war, and a great deal more consideration is being shown to the men who fought. At the end of the last war they were thrown out with a fortnight's pay and the key of the street, and endless bitterness arose from the way in which they were dismissed after the last war. We have our record; 1,500,000 will be discharged by the end of the year. I ark the right hon Gentleman, Does he want us to scrap this plan? Does he want us to keep this plan —on nominally but sap it away so that it becomes nugatory by allowing all kinds of exceptions?— [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]— Does the right hon. Gentleman want us to scrap the basis of the Bevin plan of age and length of service?

Mr. Churchill: It is difficult to answer in a few words. There is great difference in the situation now and the one which we had after the last war. After the last war we had no people East of Suez, but we had great problems too in one sphere. What has come to be a great difficulty in the present situation is that we have a comparatively small number of men far off beyond Suez in the East, and that is holding up an otherwise perfectly normal rate of discharge which would be possible in all the other theatres. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] The new question is, how far is it possible to release those from the nearer theatres— [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer "]—and how long must great numbers be kept waiting about, because of the great difficulty of releasing a very few from the distance?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman has pointed out that conditions have changed, because the Japanese war has come to an end, but this position, which was adopted by the late Government, was under the general idea that the Japanese war would continue and that you would have people there and you would have people at home; yet that position was strongly put by the right hon. Gentleman about the morale of the men, and that we must maintain it. Believe me, the need for keeping up the morale of men who are scattered all over Asia and elsewhere is just as strong.

Mr. Churchill: It is all a question of proportion.

The Prime Minister: And then the question is as to shipping. It is easy to say there are ships. We have scoured the place for ships. We have managed to speed it up. The right hon. Gentle man knows that demobilisation is not just a question of pulling out men here and there. You have to think of the efficiency of the units when rapidly taking away all the older men and all the rest of it. I do not need to tell the right hon. Gentle man that it is not an easy process and therefore people should not talk lightly about it.
The next point I would like to take up with the right hon. Gentleman is one which—I hope I have the quotation correctly, I only depended on "The Times" —occurs in part of his speech when he was speaking among friends. He said:
Every effort is being made by the Socialist Government to restrain and diminish the purchasing or consuming power of the public; spending must be damped down or there might be the danger of inflation.
The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think this was very wrong of us. I would like to stress the words of the right hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Anderson) on the Budget:
I entirely agree that it is right, prudent and proper to hold back purchasing power as far as possible until supplies of goods are more freely available." — [OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th October, 1945; Vol. 414, c. 2017.]
A Paper was issued by the late Government. I am sure that it is familiar to the right hon. Gentleman. It was called "Employment Policy." It said
The danger will come when people relax from the discipline and strain of war and look round for opportunities to spend the money they have saved. If there were then a scramble to buy while there was still a shortage of goods prices would rise. This would mean an inflation boom bringing with it social injustices and economic disturbances.
The right hon. Gentleman suggested that all of this was due to a fad of the Socialists for austerity. He said:
It is not the speedy recovery of our country's trade and industry. According to the Government, when we have got all this austerity, we do not get a revival, we only get to the half-baked nationalisation plans of the Socialist doctrinaires.
Well, it was not "according to the Government." There is not a word of truth in the statement. The right hon.


Gentleman says, quite rightly, that the remedy is increased production. It is all very well to throw that out at a Party meeting or in this House on a Motion of Censure, but let us sec the more considered language of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues in the White Paper:
Peace-time production like war production will necessarily take some time to get into its stride….Civilian production when it is resumed may concentrate on the wrong things, from the point of view of national needs.
The right hon. Gentleman says, in that breezy way of his, "Look at the United States of America, a
mighty evolution taking place in a violent, convulsive, passionate manner, which causes great commotion and disturbance, but which has already led to an enormous increase, in output of necessary things for the home market with an immense, ever-growing overspill for foreign exports.
But has it? This is what a woman reporter of the "Sunday Times" says—and this is from New York—
Purchasers are pushing notes across the counters for luxury items ranging from ruby-tipped hat-pins costing £50 to Piper Cub aeroplanes ….Women run their hands lovingly over the sensuous smoothness of mink-lined mink coats—reversible fur—with, the equally fanciful price-tag of£3,000. At a nearby salon a tiny perfume ampule, set with sapphires, was selling for£75 … Despite the 'get it at any price' psychology"—
and despite the right hon. Gentleman's confidence, I might add—
of the first peacetime Christmas since 1940, real shortages exist in many fields. Would-be buyers of men's clothing, children's toys and household appliances are met by harassed store-owners' vague talk of slowed reconversion, and bare shelves.
In every industry in this country catering for the ordinary simple people's wants, there has been a steady increase of labour and of output. I freely admit that we have not done anything about mink coats or sapphire ampules. It is so easy to suggest that nothing is being done. Take the furniture industry: a rise in the labour force of 4,000 in two months; production of utility units today is over 50 percent. above the monthly average in the first half of the year. In the carpet industry the labour increase was more than 50 percent between May and October, and production for the present quarter is 40 percent. up on the last quarter. What is the picture we get from the other side? And let me say that that kind of thing does not do us any good

abroad and I should suggest that right hon. Gentlemen who believe in and want to support the foreign polio of this country should not cry "stinking fish" all the time. In the linoleum industry, the labour force is 25 percent. higher. So I might go on the whole way— clothing, hosiery, cotton, all those things which are just the simple things that people want.
I give another fact not quite realised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot. He complained that the labour force in the heavy electrical industry had fallen since the end of the Japanese war. I know he has only recently taken over, but he must realise that this fall is the measure of the cut the Government has made in munitions production. It completely contradicts the complaint he made of the slowness in cut ting munitions production. The hard fact is that the labour force in the munitions industries is going rapidly and steadily down, and the labour force in civilian industries is going rapidly and steadily up. The right hon. Gentleman spoke about factory building. My right hon. Friend the President of the' Board of Trade dealt with all those hampering restrictions invented by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. [HON. MEMBERS: ''No."] Oh, yes. I am quite aware that in the war we were not erecting factories, but this was provision for the post war period. He appears to be unaware that 80- new factories are being built at this moment in the development areas.
Let me turn for a moment to finance, a subject on which I move with some delicacy—I am not even as much at ease perhaps as the right hon. Gentleman opposite. He said that at least £800,000,000 could have been saved this year by sensible, vigorous administration of our finances.

Mr. Churchill: This financial year, up to 31st March.

The Prime Minister: Yes—by setting free at an early date millions of men and women now kept in unemployment. I should like to know whether there is any basis for that figure. Any one can say ££ 800,000,000, or even £1,600,000,000, but where does it come from? Was it given to him by the distinguished physicist who supplies him with economic information? I would ask whether, in rendering that figure, he has taken into account all the additional expenditure which arises on the


termination of a war. Let us look at the facts. Demobilisation charges do not stop directly men are demobilised. There is leave of eight weeks, plus foreign service leave, during which they draw pay and allowances. They are paid their war gratuities. Does he want to cut that off, out of the £800,000,000? This is actually an increase in expenditure, and for the Army alone this amounts to£100,000,000 in the current year. You cannot escape that. As regards munitions, despite substantial progress payments, when a con tract is terminated, arrears of payment fall due, and that is a very large item. Then we have the cost of a very large haul of prisoners—he has forgotten that. There is requisitioned property, which when vacated involves heavy compensation. There is Lend-Lease, which ceased at the end of the war. For food alone there is an additional charge of £150,000,000, as the direct consequence of the termination of hostilities. This is not all, as the right hon. Gentleman said, paying people for doing nothing. They are putting up houses and factories in the development areas, for returning Servicemen. All those things are of the nature of capital investment by the community. I dare say these were not noticed.
Estimates will be presented next year in the House and we shall be able to take them in detail. But, as a matter of fact, reductions in expenditure are being tackled vigorously. Let me say here that I do not believe anybody would imagine that directly a war stops you can stop all munition making. Certain supplies have to go on; you cannot close the whole thing straight away, and it is not always worth while closing it straight away. In spite of that, Ministry of Supply expenditure in August, September and October was 40 percent, lower than for the corresponding months in 1944. Eleven thousand five hundred Ministry of Sup ply contracts were immediately terminated and 16,000 were allowed to run out. From the picture that is painted, one would think everything was going on as before. On our naval construction, mainly owing to cancellation since VI Day, a saving of over £70,000,000 will be achieved. At the end of the war the Treasury immediately issued instructions for a strict review of expenditure. Why-should the right hon. Gentleman imagine that because my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer prudently

took a Vote of Credit to cover the whole period, that necessarily means that it will be spent?
Having dealt with that, I do not think I need say very much about the housing position, which has been very fully ex pounded in Debates in this House. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has replied to these points over and over again, and it is not true that when we came in everything was fit for a start. There were grave difficulties; in particular there were key men who were not out of the Forces, and you have to have some key men, architects and the rest. Also let me say that it is not easy to start get ting a vast number of houses up when you are coming on into the winter season. You cannot expect to see them all finished. But this point has been dealt with so often in so many housing De bates that I do not want to keep the House on it.
I must turn now to the right hon. Gentleman's main indictment:
these gloomy vultures of nationalisation hovering over our basic industries.
I have no doubt the right hon. Gentle man knows all about vultures. The vultures never fed on him because he kept alive, fortunately for us all; vultures feed on rotten carrion. Is it his view that our basic industries arc so rotten that they attract the vultures? Is that his view of private enterprise? He talks about growing uncertainty. There is no growing uncertainty whatever.[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Well, really, if hon. Members are uncertain, they have been asleep for a. long time. Our party has stood for nationalisation programmes for 40 years or more, and even an hon. Member opposite might have realised that when we got a majority we should naturally go in for nationalisation. At the same time, we put it quite clearly in the King's Speech that we intended to nationalise certain industries. Reassurances were given to others by Ministers, and particularly by my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council, and really there is no growing uncertainty. [An HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] If the hon. Member, instead of shouting "No, no," would read the speeches of intelligent industrialists like the president of F.B.I., and many others, they would find that they know a great deal more about their business than he does. I noticed with interest the difference between the wild


and whirling words of the right hon. Gentleman opposite at the Friends Meeting House and the speech of the right hon. Gentleman whom we are so glad to welcome back to the House, the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan). Characteristically, he continues to tread the middle way, while the right hon. Gentleman right back in the Conservative Party goes down the primrose path, which everybody remembers, leads to the eternal bonfire.
The right hon. Gentleman says that our proposals on nationalisation divert the Government from the immediate task. That is an example of a static mind. The idea is that private enterprise is the only way in which our economic affairs can be managed. The right hon. Gentleman has grown up with that idea and he cannot get it out of his head. I am quite sure, had he been born in one of those countries where the railways had, from the start, belonged to the State, he would have thought it a perfectly natural thing. [An HON. MEMBERS: "Which countries?"] A great many countries. Any handbook will show which they are. The right hon. Gentleman's general pro position seems to be that things should be left as they are. Is he satisfied with the coal industry? Has he been satisfied at any time in the last 25 years with the organisation of the coal industry? What ever happens, something has to be done with the coal industry, on the admission of the people who run it. It is a question as to which is the best way to deal with that particular piece of economic machinery, our way or their way. We have had 20 years and more of fiddling about with their way, and in consonance with the view of every authoritative commission, we now intend to take our way. I think we hardly need mention the Bank of England, because it has gone through so quietly. Electricity—that was half done by a Conservative Government. I very well remember that Bill going through; there were no cries about this "wicked Socialist Measure.

Mr. Churchill: I was Chancellor.

The Prime Minister: I know. It was introduced by the chairman of the Anti-Socialist Union. I may say he got it through with the help of a Socialist who was leading the Labour side of the Com-

mittee upstairs, and myself. And now gas; here we have the report of the Heyworth Committee on gas. The people who were on that committee, I may say, were not Socialist nominees. The Minister was not a Socialist. Here you have a report not based on any theories or ideologies but on the plain facts as they presented themselves to commonsense men.
As a matter of fact, although this Motion of Censure is nominally directed against the Government, it seems really to be more a Motion of Censure on the electors for returning Socialists. It seems to be a terrible shock—quite naturally perhaps for people who remember 1935—that a Government should come in prepared to carry out its policy. We all remember 1935, the great victory for collective security and sanctions— followed by Hoare-Laval. Now we have a wonderful cry which the party opposite are putting forward—" the people versus the Socialists." This is right in line with the right hon. Gentleman's propaganda at the time of the General Election. Then the Tory Party was the nation. They are now the people. "Truly ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman's mind, when he was thinking of "the people versus the Socialists," must have gone back to an earlier epoch, to the epoch of the people's Budget, when he and Mr. Lloyd George were standing for the people, against the Tory Party.
Only a few years back the right hon. Gentleman was telling us that the Conservative Party was ruining the country. He was himself called to the Premiership, not by the Tory Party, by whom he was despised and rejected, but by the action and with the support of the doctrinaire Socialists, the vultures, the people who are not really allowed to belong to the nation now. As a matter of fact, no one who does not believe in the right hon. Gentleman is any part of the people. No one who does not belong to the party which, for the time being, he has selected for the honour of supporting him really belongs to the people. We were all of the people for five years, but I am afraid we are out of it now. The right hon. Gentleman said that the vote at the General Election was
one of the greatest disasters that has smitten us in our long and chequered history.


Here I am not quite sure that I have the correct report "The Times" said:
Our long and chequered history
That might have meant cither the Conservative Party or even, in a regal mood, the right hon. Gentleman himself. I checked it up with something that was nearer and dearer, the "Daily Express," and it reported that it was
''one of the greatest disasters which have smitten this country
That was because the electors did not accept the right hon. Gentleman. Because the alternative to Labour and a Socialist programme was the right hon. Gentleman. Throughout the Election he had the spotlight. All those able and experienced Front Benchers, and those who have fallen by the wayside, were, after all, mere chorus girls; the prima donna held the stage. The very candidates, hon. Gentlemen opposite, were commended to the electors not on their individual merits, but as the chosen supporters of the right hon. Gentleman. We all remember those posters. The whole thing was epitomised by a witty man in the City of Oxford who wrote on one of them "Love me, love my Hogg." I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows by now that that was not good tactics at the General Election, that this country does not like one-man shows, and therefore, will not accept this Motion of Censure as anything more than a party move of a politician in difficulties and will not accept the cry of "the people against the Socialists." We shall go for ward with our policy, the policy on which we were returned to power by the votes of the electors. We intend to carry out both our short-term programme, dealing with immediate problems, and our long-term programme of reconstruction, and I believe that in doing that we shall have the steady support of the vast majority of the people of this country, workers and employers alike.

5.22 p.m.

Mr. Boothby: I would like to make clear at the outset that, much as I enjoyed the very agreeable, vigorous and humorous speech of the Prime Minister, I did not rise to my feet in order to cheer him. We all enjoyed the right hon. Gentleman's speech, which, although it had little relevance to the Motion under discussion, was great fun. There is one point in that

speech which I would like to take up at once. The Prime Minister taunted my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for his long and honourable association, both in peace and war, with Mr. Lloyd George. I suggest to the Prime Minister that at the end of the day, and in the history books of this country, my right hon. Friend will have no more cause to be ashamed of his association with Mr. Lloyd George than the Prime Minister will have cause to be ashamed of his association with my right hon. Friend during five years of war.
The Prime Minister's speech did not answer any of the questions that have been put in this Debate so far, except one. He made a very important statement on the subject of demobilisation. He told us there is now to be a constant acceleration. Why? I suggest it is because of the pressure that has been exercised from this side of the House unremittingly, day in and day out, for the last few months. The Prime Minister said that our war industries are going rapidly and steadily down, and our civilian industries are going rapidly and steadily up. I must, I suppose, take his word for it; but he gave no figures, and we are left completely in the dark as to what "rapidly and steadily" means in cither case. In fact, we are being left in the dark at the present time about far too much in this country. Our complaint against the Government is not of what they have done; our complaint is that they have not done enough. It is of what they are not doing.
I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to reflect upon what was the policy and programme that gave them a great victory at the General Election. I suggest there were four main points. First of all, they gave an impression, and a promise, to the electorate that they would get the men and women in the Forces back home and out of the Forces as quickly as possible. They have not done so. Secondly, they gave the impression, and many of them gave specific promises, that they would build houses and homes for the people of this country quickly— I emphasise the word "quickly." Are they going to do that? I do not think so. Nobody denies that, as the years roll by, the Minister of Health will produce a considerable number of houses; but there is no doubt that he will not produce a large number of houses during the next 18


months or two years. That is our complaint. We say that if he had set up a national housing corporation to standardise production, to make bulk purchases, and to bring every single agency in this country, private or public, into the emergency construction of houses, as if it were a war operation, we should have had an infinitely larger number of houses than we are going to have during this present emergency.
The third impression which the Labour Party gave to the electors was that, some how or other, if they got back into power, they would make life in this country more agreeable and easier, especially for the workers, after six years of war. I ask any hon. Member to travel round the country, if he has the courage and strength to do it, and to say at the end of the journey how much more agreeable life is in any part of the country. The full austerity and rigour of war presses upon every part of the country at the pre sent time, and there is no alleviation in any direction. Lastly—and this was a great vote winner—practically every hon. Member opposite said that if the Labour Party got back they would increase old age pensions at once; and they taunted hon. Members on this side for not having done so. I say to the Prime Minister and to hon. Members opposite that if, instead of deluging the House with a mass of de tailed legislation designed to perpetuate every kind and form of control, they had come to the House with a short Measure for the alleviation of the conditions of the old people during these winter months, they would have found very little opposition from these benches; and I certainly would have supported such a Measure.
What is the main cause of trouble in this country at the present time? Every hon. Member on both sides of the House admits that it is shortage of labour. Shortage of labour is universal; and at this stage it is inexcusable, on the scale which prevails at the present time. In one industry of which I know something, agriculture, the shortage of labour for "every purpose is alarming; and if some thing of a drastic nature is not done now, we are heading for a crisis of the first order in the agricultural industry. With the removal of prisoners of war, we shall not be able to get in next year's harvest unless the Government takes much more vigorous action. The Minister of Labour

has himself said that peacetime industries require an additional 5,000,000 workers to restore them to the 1939 level. The Prime Minister has just admitted that the question boils down to demobilisation. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, there are still 4,000,000 men and women in the Armed Forces. By the end of September only 1,200,000 had been released. Now we have been promised by the Prime Minister further substantial releases, but how many of these people will be available for industry? We do not know. How many-are women? We do not know. How many key men are getting out of the Forces at the present time—key men upon whom the industrial and economic recovery of the country mainly depends? All we do know is that they are far too few. The Prime Minister referred to the "vague statements" that had been made by hon. Members on this side about demobilisation. Let me give him a concrete statement from a squadron leader in Maintenance Command from whom I received a letter only yesterday:
The whole Command is grossly over-established—at least, that is our opinion—as many technical officers, including myself, have had no serious employment for six months or more, and further, expect to be doing even less in the future. Despite these facts, men are being kept idle overseas to sweat it out, and be driven round the bend by the futility and stupidity of it all. There ought to be a civilian commission despatched to conduct an unimpeded and thorough investigation.
That is not a vague statement. I submit to the House that this vast army of uniformed unemployed still in this country and overseas is a scandal. With all the emphasis at my command, I want to put two suggestions to His Majesty's Government. The first is that they should alter the conditions of Class B releases; and quickly, so as to quadruple the rate of Class B releases of key men upon whom the revival of this country depends. The second suggestion is that I believe the emergency is so great that the Government ought to call a halt, for the next couple of years at any rate, to the call up of apprentices. I have a letter from a firm of engineers which has an emergency order to re-engine a fishing boat which it is unable to fulfil because, it says, it is now losing men to the Forces at such a rate that it is unable to obtain others to take their places; and that if this goes on there will be no prospect of doing any more overhauls.
This brings me to the final, and long-term, aspect of this particular problem; and that is the permanent strength of our armed Forces. Now that the Prime Minister has announced to-day the Government's plans on the speeding up of demobilisation, we must all hope and pray that demobilisation in the Empire will be over within the next six or nine months at any rate. After that, we have to consider the permanent established strength of our Armed Forces. In one of the first speeches which he made in this Parliament, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition asked the Government to decide now what, in their opinion, should be the permanent strength of the Armed Forces of this country, in relation to their commitments. He was told that the question was mischievous and irresponsible. It was the most sensible question that has been asked in this House since this Parliament began. Of course we have commitments, but they are not unlimited; and one thing is quite possible, and that is that the swollen garrisons in Europe at the present time could very quickly be cut down without any danger to this country. Take the case of Austria. Between the whole of the Allies we have 900,000 troops in Austria—one soldier to every three Austrians to prevent them rising. But they have shown not the slightest inclination to rise.
Take the case of the Navy. It is apparently to be maintained at a strength four or five times greater than it was prewar. Why? There is only one other navy afloat at the present time, and that is the Navy of the United States. I asked the First Lord of the Admiralty the other day what was the present strength of the Pacific Fleet, the Mediterranean Fleet and the Home Fleet, and I asked him whether we were building any battleships, and if so what was their cost. The First Lord replied that it would not be in the public interest to give me that information. All I can say is that, unless he is contemplating an early invasion of the United States, I cannot see why it should not be in the public interest to give the House that in formation; and, indeed, the House of Commons has a right to know the strength of our Armed Forces, and not only their strength, but how much money we are pending on them.
The question of manpower has been laboured to a considerable extent in this

Debate, but it is most important. I turn now to the question of industry, upon which, in the final analysis, all else depends. I am most anxious to give the Government full credit where credit is their due. There is one industry in this country which is booming at the present time, and in a state of great prosperity as a result of their efforts; and that is the black market. I was told yesterday that I could get a petrol coupon for 50 gallons for a fiver, and I thought that was a very reasonable offer. But1 hasten to tell the House that I did not succumo to the temptation. I have not got a motor car. I would like to tell the Government why this black market is so successful, for nobody can deny that it is flourishing. It is flourishing like a damp clammy hand over this country because practically' everything is in short supply. Too short supply for the situation in which we find ourselves, and for the length of time which has elapsed since the conclusion of the war.
To revert from the black market to the more respectable industries, the Government have confided, on their own admission, over 80 percent of our industrial effort to private enterprise. We, in this House, of course, like to work in the public service; and we work very hard just for the pleasure of working. But the ordinary business man, and indeed the ordinary civilian in this and every other country, so far, has always worked be cause he got something out of it; and does not really enjoy working just for the pleasure of it. In order to get the ordinary man to work hard, you have to give him either a kick or a carrot. You have either to compel him to work, which is alien to all our traditions; or you have to give him some incentive to work. The Government give him neither of these things. They give him neither kick nor carrot. They give him lectures; and the lecturers-in-chief are the Lord President of the Council and the President of the Board of Trade. The Lord President is the more truculent, and the President of the Board of Trade is the more gloomy; but neither of these lecturers has had a very stimulating effect upon the trade of this country.
A friend of mine went to listen to the speech of the President of the Board of Trade to 2,000 business men in Manchester; and, afterwards, I asked him what he felt like. He said, "I felt like


suicide; but I changed it to a double whisky." If that is the frame of mind which the President induces in the leaders and captains of industry in this country, it is not much good. It is no use teaching your grandmother to suck eggs if you have not got any eggs; and the first thing the President has to do is to get some eggs. There are two essential conditions for the working of the capitalist system, on which the Government places an almost pathetic reliance so far as the export trade is concerned, although they are prepared to play about with some services and industries not affecting our exports. When it comes to exports, on which the life of the country depends, they say "Hands off," and will not even touch the shipping industry. This capitalist system, on which they rely so much, depends on two things—the profit motive and confidence—and our complaint is that the Government have done their best to remove the former and undermine the latter.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer fiddled about with E.P.T. in his Budget. Why did he not remove it? He admitted it was a rotten tax, and not much use from the point of view of the revenue. Why did he not also give back the allowances on earned income? Like E.P.T., Income Tax at the lower levels, falls on marginal earnings. Let me give one example from the industrial field. I want to ask the Government if they regard the motor industry of this country as a revenue producing or an export industry; because they can have it one way or the other, but not both ways. This change to cubic capacity is mere —the small steps ensure that we shall continue to produce endless models of small cars quite unsuitable for foreign markets. The general weight of taxation and the continuance of the Purchase Tax ensure that production for the home market will not be expanded sufficiently to sustain an export trade for motor cars at reasonable prices. We are already 7,500 cars behind schedule.
Why is this weight of taxation retained? Why will not the Chancellor either restore to us the Income Tax allowances, or take off the Purchase Tax? The reason is because of our fantastic rate of current expenditure; and we have at present neither the information nor the oppor-

tunity given to us by the Government to exercise the slightest control over that expenditure. We do not even know what it is; nor can we check extravagance or waste of any kind.
Now I come to the question of controls. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) made a most formidable attack on the President of the Board of Trade, which that Minister made not the slightest attempt to answer. The President simply said that the right hon. Gentleman was talking nonsense, that the controls are beautifully run by his Department, when everyone knows they are not, and that was the end of it. The present licensing system was designed to throttle, not stimulate civilian production. There was no plan, apart from the urgent demands of the Service Departments, which had to be met and were given full priority over everything. What is the plan today? In industry after industry, the tendency today, as a result of these restrictions and controls, is towards monopoly and contraction rather than towards expansion; and little or no chance is given to the small man, and, particularly, to the small man who wants to start up in business. The whole of this fossilised structure of licensing and control prevents the entry of any new man into industry, when practically all licences are granted to people in relation to their 1938 volume of trade. This rule is laid down in far too many cases, and in far too many industries, and the result is that nobody can get in who was not there before the war.
I am not talking about nationalisation. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bromley (Mr. Harold Macmillan) that, so far as services are concerned, this business of nationalisation should be treated, not in accordance with any theoretical dogma, but on its merits. I think there may be quite a good psychological case for the nationalisation of the coal-mining industry; and quite a good economic case, on the basis of the Report published yesterday, for the nationalisation of the gas industry. I am therefore not talking about doctrinaire theories of nationalisation, but I am referring to industry as a whole; and who can deny — who knows anything about it—that industry today is riddled with red tape, and that delays extend over the whole field? I believe this has been greatly


aggravated by the policy of departmental separatism.
Take the exporter who wants to export goods. He has to go to the Board of Trade, to the Department of Overseas Trade, to the Treasury, of course, the Ministry of Supply, the Export Credits Department; and now, I understand, as the administration of the Consular Services has been taken away from the Department of Overseas Trade and given to the Foreign Office, he now will have to go to the Foreign Office as well—a total of six Departments. It is in fact almost a physical impossibility to export goods from this country at the present time. I ask the Government to believe it. I have had some experience; and it is no use for the President to ride off the whole question by saying that the controls are all right because he is running them. That just is not true.
The gravamen of our complaint is first that the administration, particularly that of the Board of Trade, is cumbrous, in efficient and overburdened; and, secondly, that new ideas, innovations, new entrants to industry and improvements to plant are alike discouraged by the present policy of the Government. Everywhere in this country there is a sense of frustration. The Government cannot completely dismiss Lord Woolton as negligible, because he was a great administrator, one of the very greatest we have ever had. I had the privilege of serving under him; and he is also a great business man. Listen to what he has to say:
The truth is that the Government has taken on more than it can do: the business of government is to lay clown broad principles for the well 'being and good conduct of the country. When it attempts to determine the detail of operations, it is taking on a task for which it has neither competent staff nor the quick machinery that detailed commercial decisions demand. The great trade drive of Britain is being stifled at its birth—and the first fruits of failure will fall on the wage-earning classes.
And now a last point on planning. The party which I have the honour to adorn has often in the past been infected by the doctrine of laissez-faire; but never, in its whole history, has it embraced it. Mr. Amery, one of our most distinguished leaders, wrote long ago:
Only a planned trade and industrial policy ran sustain a planned social system in a highly competitive world. The economic stability, and progress, upon which depends all future progress in social reform, cannot be left to the chances of unaided individual enterprise in a

world of promiscuous international competition
We subscribe to that; and in any successful modern society, there must be control over the issue of credit and the management of money, the export of capital, and the import of essential raw materials, including food.
These vital controls, exercised at the summit of power, need not interfere unnecessarily or unduy with the ordinary life and day-to-day work of the individual business man in this country. But what we want to know on this side of the House is, have the Government any coherent national policy of planned economic expansion at the present time? They are pledged to stabilise the cost of living. Have they a national wage policy? The question has already been asked by the Leader of the Opposition. And if they have not, is the taxpayer to foot the whole bill in the event of general wage rises taking place; and, if that be so, how are they to avoid a swinging inflation within the next two years? Have they an export policy? Have they really thought out their export policy? The volume of exports in the third quarter of this year was only 46 percent. of the 1938 level. What is the target for next year? Does it still stand at 50 percent. above our pre-war exports? Is it still £1000 million of exports? They have not told us yet what they are aiming at. If that is what they are aiming at, how do they propose to reach that target?
Our complaint is that there is plenty of planning, far too much planning, at the lower levels in this country; and far too little constructive planning at the highest level of all. What are the Government now proposing? To hand over the vital, strategic controls which I mentioned just now to an international authority upon which we in this country will be in a minority; and retain all the pettifogging red-tape controls at the lower levels, which are throttling production at the present time? It really is fantastic. I am one of those, as some hon. Members know, who voted in favour of the nationalisation of the Bank of England, because I think we ought to have a national control over the issue of credit and the management of money in this country. But I do not think I would have bothered to do so if I had known that, so soon after, we should have been handing over


the control of credit to an international fund in the United States of America, over which we shall have no control at all. It is really, in the circumstances, rather a waste of time to have bothered to nationalise the Bank of England. We might as well have handed it over to America right away, and saved a good deal of time. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister referred to the Bank of England as having "gone over so quietly." I wonder whether he was referring to the transfer of ownership to the Government, or the transfer across the Atlantic Ocean. I only hope, as far as I am concerned, that it will not go so quietly over the Atlantic Ocean as it has crossed from Thread needle Street to Whitehall.
Now one word, in conclusion, about the Party to which I belong. We have had a great many sneers in this Debate, and before, during, and since the Election. I read a little time ago a comment by one of our brightest and most intelligent political writers that there was a danger of the Tory Party developing into nothing more than a "Society of Distressed Gentlefolk." I do not think there is the slightest danger of that; but I do see some danger in the propagation of this false legend of Tory stupidity. We read a great deal about the Socialist "intelligentsia." It is about time we started reading some thing about the Conservative "intelligentsia." [An HON. MEMBER: "About time you got some."] We have lots of intelligence. We are extremely able people on this side of the House. We are much cleverer than hon. Gentlemen opposite. The only difference is that we do not show off to the same extent. We have a great tradition. Viscount Bolingbroke may have had his faults—he was one of the founders of our party—but I have never heard it maintained that he was a stupid man; and I cannot think that, in the circumstances of the time, the choice of Disraeli as leader was based upon his appearance. I think rather that it was because he displayed, on occasion, flashes of intense intelligence. Nor have we ever been afraid in this party to find leaders outside our ranks, if they looked intelligent enough and the occasion demanded it. [An HON. MEMBER: "You had to."] There were Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. Lloyd George and, although by that time he had come back to the fold, I think

I might perhaps add our present Prime Minister whom we made Prime Minister in the nick of time—I beg pardon, leader we still think of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) as the Prime Minister.
There was only one serious slip this party ever made, and that was the occasion when, for a brief and unhappy period, they turned for leadership to the Party opposite. No one can now say that Mr. Ramsay. MacDonald or Mr. Snowden was a fortunate choice from our point of view. This legend of stupidity is really just a hangover from the days of Lord Baldwin, one of the shrewdest of politicians, who, in his emotional reaction against Mr. Lloyd George, managed to persuade the country for a time that intelligence and amorality were synonymous. He was such an able politician, and he propagandied so effectively, that he managed to persuade the country that the party to which I belong was, in fact, stupid. I say to hon. Members opposite, that the country will very shortly find out that that is the mistake of their lives. We shall show them in the next few months, not only that we are intelligent but, if they are prepared to give us half a chance, and abandon doctrinaire theory in favour of effective practice, that we will assist them in every way that lies in our power to pull this country through one of the most difficult periods which it has ever confronted; because the battle that lies ahead of us is an economic battle no less serious than the military battle that confronted us in 1940.
We have no desire to see this Government fail on the economic front. I do not share the enthusiasm of the President of the Board of Trade for high thinking and hard living, just for the hell of it— as the Americans say. I look forward to four more years of bleak and black and totalitarian austerity with morbid apprehension; and I certainly would do any thing that lay in my power to avoid it 1 think that the President of the Board of Trade and the Lord President of the Council are the very worst people to lecture and guide the industrialists of this country at the present time. The Lord President has always loved ordering people about. He has revelled in it. One of his more dubious claims to fame is that, in order to make up for his lack of enthusiasm about the last war, in this


war he has imprisoned more people with out charge or trial than anybody since King John. I feel that his natural instinct would be to lock up every industrialist who did not conform to his ideas at any given moment. But the British worker, as well as the British industrialist, is a stubborn individual; and if you try to order him about, he just will not function. A great many people in this country, not only in the employing class but also amongst the workers, think that they are being pushed about too far, and to too great an extent at the present time; only most of them would use a harsher verb than I have done.

Flying-Officer Lever: Would the hon. Gentleman allow me? I interrupt in a helpful spirit. He said that the Lord President of the Council had locked up more people than anybody since King John. Is it not the fact that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Anderson) was the one who locked them up and it was the Lord President of the Council who released them?

Mr. Boothby: My right hon. Friend locked up some, and the Lord President of the Council locked up more; and the Lord President 0of the Council kept the whole lot in till the end of the war.
In conclusion, I would like to say, at the end of what has been far too long a speech, that the conclusion of the whole matter, and the gravamen of our complaint, and the justification for this Motion of Censure, is that the answer to the problem, both at home and abroad, in this country at the present time as I believe every hon. Member will agree, is production—one word: production; output per man hour. This is the answer, and the only answer. If we all pull together we can get it; but if we throttle industry from morning to night in the way I have described, we shall never get it; and in that case we shall never get through. All we say at the moment is that we have hopes for the future— heaven knows, we all have hopes—but we also say that, judged by this single test, the only test that matters— production-the failure of this Government, up to date, has been lamentable.

5.56 p.m.

Captain Noel-Baker: I hope that hon. Members will appreciate that it is in some ways

a rather testing experience for a maiden speaker to break into a Debate after the display of Parliamentary oratory that we have heard since the discussion on this Motion was resumed this afternoon. 1 hope, therefore, that, as one of the youngest Members in this House, I shall be able to count on even more than the usual kindly sympathy with which it is the custom of this House to listen to maiden speeches.
Since yesterday the House has been reviewing the work started by His Majesty's Ministers four months ago, and has been considering the prospects for the future welfare of the people of this country as, one by one, the pledges which we made to them during the Election are put into practice. Listening to the earnest protests of hon. Members on the other side of the House against the implementation of those pledges, I have often been reminded of a conversation which was overheard on the morning of 25th July somewhere in London. It may even have been in the lobby of Claridge's Hotel. A lady was watching the tape machine as the results of the General Election came through, and, after one particularly striking Labour triumph, when it became clear what the final result was going to be, she said, "But this is terrible. They have elected a Labour Government and the country will never stand for that." That, it seems to be, is the kind of spirit in which the Motion that we are now discussing has been tabled. His Majesty's Ministers, as the Motion complains, are indeed impelled by Socialist principles. The programme of His Majesty's Government is indeed a Socialist programme. There is surely no cause for surprise in that, unless the precedents set after other Elections by other parties— and I recall pledges given in 1918 about homes for heroes, in 1931 about the gold standard, and in 1935 about collective security— are to be considered as the criterion today, and happily for this country they are not.
When, four months ago, the British people declared their conviction that the best interest of the nation was the implementation of Socialist principles and of a Socialist programme, they had already been told as clearly as possible, and in as much detail as possible, exactly what that implementation in practical terms would mean. And let me say, in answer to many


interpolations from hon. Gentlemen opposite, that we on this side of the House were very careful, all of us, at the time of the General Election not to indulge in facile promises, because we knew, as the people of this country knew, that to recover from six years of war, and not only from the ravages of the second world war but also from the ravages of 20 grim and dismal years when this country was governed by Ministers not impelled by Socialist theory—that the task of recovery from the devastations of the war years and the between-war years would be a gigantic task which would call for a great deal of effort and a great deal of hard work, and that is what we told the people of Great Britain. And the British people, with bitter memories of the past and with a very clear understanding of the difficulties of the future, understood what we told them and gave us their mandate.
Surely nothing could be clearer than their response. When they elected this Socialist Government with this over whelming Socialist majority, what they were asking for was a Socialist programme, nothing more and nothing less. So that if this Motion—which in my view has been so unwisely and so untimely tabled by the Opposition—has any real significance, it is to express their disapproval, their distrust, their dislike, not of His Majesty's present Ministers, but of the electorate of the United Kingdom.
Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House have spent a great deal of time in talking about controls. The President of the Board of Trade told them yesterday how the controls that still exist are being applied, what controls had become unnecessary and are being dispensed with, and what the Government's motives are. I should like to add to that an invitation to hon. Members, like the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby), who still have doubt, to go to other countries which have been through the war as we have and where there have been no controls, and see what is happening there. I should like them to go to Greece, or any one of the other liberated countries of Europe and study conditions there. On the one hand, they will see a vast mass of people desperately struggling to obtain' the bare vital necessities of their daily life, and on the other hand, a small minority of racketeers and profiteers thriving, at their

expense, on the black market. Is that what they want to see in this country? It is hard for anyone who has not personally experienced the contrast to realise how very fortunate the people in this country are—despite all the hardships and restrictions that they have to bear— in knowing that at least the daily necessities of their lives are controlled and distributed in such a way that the supply is guaranteed. The irresponsible scrapping of controls so often advocated from the other side of the House, could not fail to produce again the economic chaos that we had here after the last war, and which is now assailing less wise and less fortunate nations at the present time.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has given us the example of the United States, where, as he said last week, the problem of reconversion from war to peace and in particular the question of demobilisation are being tackled in a violent, passionate and convulsive manner. But what is the result of all this violence and passion and convulsion? By next spring the American Administration expects to have 8,000,000 men unemployed— the trade unions say 10,000,000— and by the end of the year many authorities believe that there will be 18,000,000 Americans on the dole. Whereas, in this country, apart from the temporary pockets of unemployment, which the President of the Board of Trade described yesterday, and which are, as hon. Gentlemen on all sides of the House admit inevitable—a part from these temporary pockets of unemployment, the conversion of manpower from war to peace in this country has so far gone for ward in an astonishingly smooth way. Let us compare the industrial unrest of today with what happened after the last war. The amount of time lost in strikes is less than one-twelfth of what it was during the comparable period then. Compare that with what is happening in America or even with the conditions during the most decisive period of the offensive after D-Day last year. The loss of time is far less heavy now than it was even then. It may be that demobilisation is not going fast enough, and that we shall later on exceed the average of almost 90,000 men released per week. But it took two years to get 2,000,000 people away from peacetime activities and into the Armed Forces, and three years to mobilise the 2,000,000 women who were not wage-


carners before the war. By the end of this year—in a little over six months—we shall have transferred almost 4,000,000 men and women back to their peacetime activities. Again, let hon. Members opposite compare the progress of the present Government, and the results achieved at home, with what happened after the last war.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition deplores the preoccupation of hon. Members and Ministers with long-term schemes. Indeed, the Motion which we are now discussing has been drafted as though this country had only one more year to live— as though the British people were already in the condemned cell— and, so, indeed, our old prewar capitalist system is. But not the people, nor, I venture to suggest, H.M. Government. Very far from it. If a part of the efforts of my right hon. Friends is very wisely being directed towards long-term planning, a good part of the immediate nationalisation programme is being put through to meet immediate needs. After years of private mismanagement, the coal industry of this country— to take one example— is in such a state of chaos that the nationalisation of that industry is an immediate priority, if the people of this country are to have any coal to burn in their grates next winter or the winter after, or the miners any hope of a tolerably decent human existence. Much the same applies to the gas industry, about which a good deal has been said during this Debate. In both cases, it is a simple question of achieving productive efficiency, and there is no other way of doing it except by nationalisation.
But to go back to long-term planning, the right hon. Gentleman the Member or Woodford (Mr. Churchill) knows as well as I do, that it is quicker to run up a gimcrack, jerry-built, inadequate, potential slum dwelling than to build a solid lasting house on good strong foundations. The latter needs careful, long-term planning; the former does not. We are working on the assumption that that part of the national edifice which we have been commissioned by the people of this country to build is going to last. That is why H.M. Ministers are not only interested in devising solutions for the immediate problems that confront them, but are also going ahead with long-term planning in much the same way as the

Leader of the Opposition himself did, when he started to build up the war potential of this country in the dark days of 1940.
When I first read this Motion, and when I read the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the opposition to the Conservative Party last week— that party which in the past he has so often, so trenchantly, and in my view so rightly de nounced— when I heard the speeches of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite during this Debate, there was all the time at the back of my mind, a growing feeling of bewilderment and uneasiness. That was not because I have any fears for the future of this particular Motion, nor, indeed, for His Majesty's Socialist Government, of His Majesty's Socialist Government's Socialist programme— we in this House, and the people of this country, will look after that— but because I cannot — or perhaps because I do not want to—bring myself to understand the motives of the Opposition. Here we have a Motion which offers not one word of anything constructive; which flies in the face of the recent and overwhelming decision of the British people; which asks His Majesty's Government to repudiate the clear and specific pledges which they have just given to the electorate; and which apparently deliberately seeks to undermine the confidence of the people of this country in their powers of recovery. In the interests of what? Can it be that their only motive—the only consideration which carries weight with the Opposition—is to try to salvage the tattered remnants of 20 years of prewar political failure, of 20 years of national disaster and international disgrace? Can it be that they are just out to make trouble, cheaply and irresponsibly, in the interests of their Conservative Party machine, and at the expense of the revival of their country? I should like to believe that it is not so. I should like to believe that they will readopt their old, old slogan, so often misused, of "country before party," and today "country" means the future prosperity and welfare of all the ordinary men and women of Great Britain.
It may be that I have said more than is proper in a maiden speech, and that I ought to have sat down without saying what I really believe, but I ask the House to remember that I belong to the generation that grew up in the years between the wars. Ever since I can remember


taking an interest in politics— and that in my case goes back fairly far into my short life—things have been going wrong. One after another, I have had to watch the failures, the disillusionments, there treats, the disasters, national and inter national, which have followed each other in dismal, desolating succession. So that when at last the war came, it was to us some thing of a relief. We thought that now at least from all the slaughter and destruction and bloodshed some new hope for the future of our generation and of the world might at long last be born.
Now military victory has come for those of us who have survived to see it. Again our hopes are high; we have a new confidence in the future; our eyes are upon this House; and may I beg hon. Members on all sides of the House to remember what they owe to the fighting men and to the people of this country, and to see that no petty motive, no selfish interest, no paltry spirit, such as that manifest in the Motion before us today, is allowed again to shatter our hopes—hopes of a democratic, free and prosperous British people, working in partnership with the free and prosperous peoples of the world; hopes that can easily be realised if all the great qualities of courage and endurance, initiative and imagination which our people showed during the war are now turned to the tasks of peace.

6.13 p.m.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: Speaking for the first time in this House, I ask for the indulgence usually accorded to those who undergo this ordeal, and particularly necessary in my case, because speaking on a Motion of Censure it is difficult not to be censorious. I will try very hard not to be as controversial as some others to whose maiden speeches I have listened.
Although a stranger to politics, I am not a stranger to certain aspects of nationalisation,. For over 27 years I served in the only wholly, totally nationalised force in this country. Therefore I think I have a very intimate acquaintance with it. During those 27 years I have found that theory and practice were intimate bed fellows, but in time of war the searchlight of practical experience is frequently brought to bear on theory, which is always suspect, and very frequently dangerous weaknesses are brought to light.
As a practical man, I have considered this subject very carefully, and for a very long time I have taken part in discussions all over the world, in discussion groups, on the question of nationalisation. The first and, I suggest, the most elementary step which anyone takes when investigating a proposal, is to search the past and see whether there have been instances of failure or success in the application of the principle involved. If there have been no instances at all, then one starts with a clean sheet and uses one's imagination. If there have been instances of failure one seeks to discover the reasons for that failure. I looked into all the cases of nationalisation, in free countries in this world, to find instances of success.
What did I find? Nothing but failure after failure— in New Zealand, Australia, America and in Europe. I will not weary the House with facts and figures, but these failures occurred in coalmining, railways, cement works, electric light, hotels, shipping lines and so on. It was clear during the Election that this great electorate of ours, who had been reading the propaganda coming out year after year, in little yellow covers, was quite unaware of this. When I suggested to them that I had a list of failures which I could show to them their faces were worth studying. They did not know. If I had been asked to ride in a race a horse with such a history of disaster behind it as the record of nationalisation shows, I should most emphatically have declined, and 1 suggest that this is what this electorate of ours is being asked to do. They have been asked to ride a horse which has been covered with beautiful rugs, but they have not had a look at the form book. What of the employees under nationalisation? Have they seriously considered what will be their position vis-à-vis the right to strike if they are employed by the Government. That is one of the greatest problems. What is the solution? Has anybody proposed a solution? Are they aware of the tremendous problems?
Have we not seen quite "recently in the two of the near-nationalised industries of this country exactly what will happen when nationalisation takes place? Why is it that the trade unions have been impotent to follow their traditional role of mediating between the workers and the employers? Why is it that the strikers have found it necessary to break away


from the trade unions and strike on their own? They know that under the system as it exists at this moment, as one hon. Member opposite said yesterday, the trade unions are the supporters of the Government. That has to be faced. I want to know what the solution is. I do not pretend I am here to try to persuade any one hon. Member opposite against his convictions, but 1 am curious. We have had no explanation. We know that the problems are there, they know they are there, but they do not give us the slightest indication that they are prepared to produce some concrete answer. These things have failed all over the world. Why should they not fail here? They have failed in Australia and New Zealand; why not in this country? Let us know what the reasons were, let us know how the Government intend to combat them.
Having served in the greatest nationalised Force of this country, the British Army, I consider that nationalisation will not succeed without direction of labour, rigid discipline and possibly the withdrawal of the right to strike. That is my own private opinion. I do not see how it can be worked otherwise. It remains to be seen and it will be very interesting to see what the Government's explanation is, and how they propose to solve that problem. I might remind those who read "The Times" that it contained on 27th November a report of a speech by the Socialist Prime Minister of Australia about the labour troubles in New South Wales. He said that the trade unions were in the most appalling state of chaos, and that labour there was. in a very grave condition indeed. His words were:
I do not want to take from the workers the right to strike …
I think that was very significant.
I turn to the question of housing, as it affects my own constituency and in relation to what I have seen with my own eyes. I know all about these wonderful plans, these castles which are being built in the air…plans which, as far as we can see at the moment, are bearing no fruit at all. I would like to suggest some of the reasons why, because I spend a certain amount of time in my own town hall, and I am interested to find out what is going on. This is the sort of thing that is happening. Just as plans are worked out, down comes another directive, another circular; that plan is scrapped, put

Into the wastepaper basket and the whole thing has to be started over again. That has happened no fewer than three times. What is happening about this question of subsidies? Plans of local councils cannot proceed one inch further until the authorities concerned know the amount of money they are to be given. We were told the other day that the Minister would not be able to give the amount until he knew what the cost of materials and houses was to be. But there is such a thing as a percentage basis? Why not give a percentage of the cost, so that they can get on with their planning? That matter has been holding them up for nearly three months.
There has been a rapid increase in the derequisitioning of houses, but what has happened since they have been derequisitioned? They have been standing empty for weeks and weeks, while 2,000 people who want accommodation have their names on a list at the town hall… men coming back from the Forces… because some small infinitesimal repair cannot be carried out because a permit will not be granted. There are rows of houses in which small repairs are required, while train loads of men go to London every day to continue with bomb damage repair in London. That is quite right up to a point, but has not the time arrived when some of the people on the South Coast should be considered?
The first of my two final points relates to the ignoring of the human factor. In my experience of planning, one of the greatest factors, one of the basic factors in any plan is the human factor. If you ignore that your plan is built on sand. I suggest that one of the greatest characteristics of the average Briton is the fact that he dislikes being ordered about and regimented. I am certain that the way to get the best out of an Englishman is to make him like what you are going to tell him to do first, and tell him to do it afterwards. If nationalisation is to depend on the direction of labour, and I cannot see how it can be otherwise, there will be trouble. There is trouble now. Some right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench are no doubt too busy to get away at the weekend to their constituencies. Some of us have the time. I have been in my constituency and in others as well, and I have seen the same thing wherever I have been. Owing to the fact that men are doing work they dislike, that they


are in an area they do not want to be in, they are not producing the amount of work which they would be producing if they were doing jobs they did like.
The other point is that before we can get the production of this country on its legs we must raise the production perm an-hour somehow. We want an inspiring clarion call to the workers of this country, to let them realise how desperately serious the situation is, not these ideological plans which mean absolutely nothing to them. And, finally, what of the housewife, who for six years has carried on and is still carrying on just as hard as she did in the war, whereas the rest of us have had a little relaxation from the 16 hours a day or what it was that we were doing. They are still continuing under as bad, if not worse conditions. I saw a woman sitting on a pavement crying her eyes out. There were holes in her shoes. She was saying, "I cannot stand it any longer." She had been at it for six years. And so have all the house-wives of England. I am sure that right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench do not realise this, or realise how hard they are being driven.

6.25 p.m.

Mr. W. J. Brown: I rise to oppose the Motion of Censure. But before dealing with that Motion, and giving my reasons for the vote I shall cast later on, it gives me pleasure to offer congratulations on behalf of the House to the two new Members who have just made their maiden speeches. The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) evidently feels strongly on some of the issues that come before this House. Strength of feeling in politics is, in my view, a virtue, and not a vice. On this occasion he was fairly non-controversial. The next time I hope he will be completely controversial, and say what he thinks, regardless of consequences. As regards the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Captain Noel-Baker) I would like to say that his father is an old and very respected Member of this House, respected by all sides of the House on the grounds of personal character, even where people dissent from him politically. My only regret while listening to his speech was that his father was not here. I think it would have done his father's heart good. Certainly we who

have heard it will tell his father how promising a beginning his son has made to the most difficult of all jobs, the job of being a good Member of Parliament. We hope that he will take a prominent part in our future Debates.
I want to oppose the Motion of Censure, but not because I object to a motion of censure in principle. If one takes the view that Governments are good things, then of course votes of censure are bad, and indeed can be regarded as positively blasphemous. I do not take the view that Government is a good thing. I take the view that, at best, it is a necessary evil. The existence of Government derives from man's inability to treat his fellow men on the basis of common brotherhood and humanity, without external compulsion. Government is, in fact, the consequence and the evidence of sin. Therefore, it is well that it should be keenly and constantly opposed, and a Motion of Censure is of course that form of opposition to government which is most direct, pointed and final.
But I hold the view that when a vote of censure is moved; four things ought to be true of it. The first is that it should be prompted by the right motive. The second is that it should come at the right time. The third is that it should come from the right quarter. And the fourth is that it shall deal with the right issues. If it satisfies those four criteria there is a case for the Motion of Censure. If it satisfies none of them there is no case for it. It is my submission that this Motion of Censure is not motivated aright, that it is not timed aright, that it did not come from the right quarter, and that it does not deal with the right issues. Apart from those objections I find no great quarrel with the terms of the Vote of Censure!
What is the motive of this Motion of Censure? Is it really to censure the Government? In my opinion that is not its purpose at all. Its purpose is not to censure the Government but to rehabilitate the Opposition. For the truth is that the Opposition in this House is in a very bad way.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: Do not believe it.

Mr. Brown: I not only believe it, I am about to demonstrate it. It cannot make up its mind about either of the two courses open to the Opposition at this point in


time. There are two courses for the Gentleman above the Gangway to take. One is to accept the verdict of the electorate at the recent General Election on the main issues submitted to the country, and then wait for new issues of Opposition to arise in the natural course of events, which invariably they do. The other is to oppose everything the Government does, right or Wong, Right or Left, on principle, on the basis that it is the duty of an Opposition to oppose. It is impossible to get unity in that party on either of those two lines of policy. You cannot get unity on the first line of accepting the verdict of the electors, because they do not like the verdict.
I have told this story before, but I do not apologise for telling it again, because it is a good story. It is the story of Bill Smith and his bat. When I was a school boy, schools were not so well equipped for sports as they are now. On one occasion in my school the headmaster tried to get up a cricket game. He said "Who's got a bat?" and Bill Smith, it appeared, had a bat. "Who's got any wickets?" and Tom Jones, it seemed, had some wickets. "Who's got a ball?" and so by one volunteer and another we eventually scraped up a game of cricket. We tossed up for sides, and we tossed up for innings, and the batting team went in. The master, having started us off on our game, went across to the side of the field to take part in a conversation. While he was talking, one of the boys came running up to him, and said in a state of great excitement, and in a very loud voice, "Bill Smith's out!" The headmaster replied, "Well, well "The boy in a still louder voice said, "But Bill Smith's out!" All right," said the master "what about it?" Well, sir, Bill Smith says he won't come out!" The master said, "Why does he say he won't come out?" "Please, teacher, he says it is his bat!" That roughly is the position of the Tory Party. They will not come out. They will not come out, because they say it is their bat; and they do not propose to give up if they can possibly avoid it. [An HON. MEMBER: "They are on a sticky wicket!"] I do not want to carry the sporting metaphor too far, because when I have been on a sticky wicket I run the risk of falling down, and I do not want that to happen this afternoon.
The problem of the Opposition is that it has to make up its mind what line of opposition the party should take. That it has not so far been able to do, and in the circumstances its only remedy is to curse the Government. On that one point there is complete unanimity, if on nothing else, and therefore the motive in this Motion of Censure is not really to censure the Government but is merely an attempt to rehabilitate the Opposition. Secondly, it has not come at the right time. The Government may be all that the Opposition says it is. It may be that the qualms, fears, and apprehensions of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway will be fulfilled in full measure— pressed down", heaped up, and running over. It may be! But it is months and years too early to assume that it will be. A Government, who have been in office for four months only, are not in a position to deliver the goods on any major issue of policy. If this Motion had come two years hence— [Interruption]. Well, that would not be too long to try, say, the nationalisation of the mines, or the rail ways— if it came two years hence it might be possible to muster evidence in support of this Motion. But you cannot, with any shadow of reason, move a Motion of Censure on a new Government who have not been in office for more than four months.
Thirdly, I have said that it comes from the wrong quarter. It comes from those who have held power in Britain practically uninterruptedly for the whole of my adult life. From 1916, when a new Government was formed under Mr. Lloyd George, until four months ago, the Tories have been in power, directly or in directly, for the whole of those 30 years, with a single brief spell of interruption in 1923–24, and another in 1929–31. They have enjoyed complete power. Your Tory is a deep fellow. He does not mind whether he exercises power in his own right, or under an alias. And the motto of the Tories has always been: "Take power yourself, and hold it a? Long as you can in your own right. If ever that becomes impossible, form a Coalition, but take care that all the really important jobs are kept on your side. Sustain the Coalition as long as you think it necessary, until you think you can again recover power. Then burst the Coalition, and resume as a Conservative Government." It is a well thought out technique,


and I do no more than give clear articulation to a modus operandi perfectly well known throughout the whole of my life time and before that.
Whatever the condition of this country is today the major responsibility—as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) said in a speech some time ago which has not been quoted —
the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of those men who possessed the power in Britain.
And the people who possessed the power in Britain for those 30 years were the Conservative Party in this country. I would like to say this, too. It is in the mind of many Conservatives that what happened at the last election was a sort of leap tide flowing a little stronger than usual, but certain to recede, and that, therefore, at the next election, the Tories might hope to get back again. In the meantime their job is to bring the next Election on as soon as possible. I do not believe that what happened in July of this year was a leap tide. When the sea comes in it recedes again. But when the earth shifts on its axis, ever so slightly, and as a result the water pours over the land, it stays there. And what happened last July was more a shifting of the earth's surface than the mere coming in of a tide. I believe that Toryism is not merely dead in Britain. I believe it is damned. I use the word quite deliberately. I believe England has passed judgment on Toryism, and that it is not a temporary or an impulsive judgment, but a firm and final judgment. I agree with what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) said yesterday, when he said that if the Government did fail, it is not to the Conservative Party that the country will then turn. It will turn further left rather than turning back to the right.
The Motion therefore comes from the wrong quarter. It was the Conservative Party in Britain which allowed 3,000,000 men to rot in idleness year after year. It was the Conservative Party in Britain which allowed agriculture to fall to the lowest level known in our history. It was the Tory Party which landed us into a war which need never have come, and would have never have come if we had grappled with foreign events in time. And

finally, it was the Tory Party which landed this country into war less prepared than ever before for a major war. The country has passed its judgment, and it is a final judgment. And in my opinion no party manipulation or manoeuvre will alter that judgment!
Fourthly, I say that this Motion does not deal with the right issues. There are plenty of issues upon which this Government ought to revise their policy. I will menton one or two, but I do so not with the object of discrediting the Government. I want to sustain the Government against this vote of censure, and any other from the same quarter. But I hope the Government, where criticism has been reasonable, will take notice of that criticism. There are indeed two or three matters to which they must give serious thought to the future. Mention has been made of the absence of a wages policy. This question is going to loom very large in the ensuing months. Whatever is done in this period, there are bound to be difficulties in wages adjustment. You cannot avoid it. But it will be even more difficult if there is no informed policy behind what is done. For instance, in the early days of the war, in order to avoid runaway inflation, the Government issued advice to employers about wage adjustments during the war period. I am not arguing whether that was right or wrong. But the Government did formulate a policy which it recommended to the country. And now we have got to formulate some policy which can be explained to the country. In default of that you will have large groups of workers each of them fighting to get the best terms they can. There will be the ordinary disbalance of the transfer from war to peace, and the further disbalance of irregular and ill co-ordinated individual action in relation to any section of the wages question. Already the job has been half done by the stabilisation of prices. The other half is the wages policy, and the Government ought to formulate one at once, and make it intelligible to the country.
Next we must have a trade union policy. I think it is fair to say that at the moment the policy of the Ministry of Labour in dealing with industrial disputes is a negative policy. He is taking a line that I can quite understand him taking. He says he will do nothing which will weaken or undermine the authority of the trade union. I am not against that,


but I am telling the Minister of Labour that he must extract something from the trade unions in return. And that must be efficiency in trade union management, promptness in the handling of disputes, and an adequate information service to keep the membership of the trade union movement informed of what is happening. It is obvious that ignorance of what has been happening has been behind the three or four disputes which have taken place recently. Where the Minister finds that the unions arc not giving the service that they ought to their membership, he ought not to put the whole of the State authority behind the unions without first of all getting the unions themselves to put their own house in order. We have had a series of unofficial disputes. No sensible trade union leader likes that. I have been a trade union leader for 30 years in an industry which does not strike, but which I think people sometimes wish would strike— especially in the tax collecting service. No sensible trade unionist wants unofficial strikes. But the unofficial strike is an almost infallible sign that a trade union is not doing its job. And there should be no blank cheques signed by the Minister of Labour, because if he gives blank cheques, the unions are not inclined to reform themselves. And if they do not we shall see a much bigger strike wave in Britain than we have seen so far. We must have a policy about the public service. I have spent most of my lifetime in the public service, and no words of praise I can utter about its probity, honesty and disinterested service would be too high. But our Civil Service was designed to discharge one set of functions and we shall add, by the Government's programme, a new and radically different type of function to the work of the public service. It is roughly true to say that the past functions of the Service have been to administer a fairly static body of legislation. Now, we are going to impose on it the business of running a consider able sector of industry. And we have to organise our Civil Service as something like an industrial Civil Service if it is to do the job. I beg Ministers— and I would beg the Chancellor if he was here— to get out of that age-old habit of assessing Civil Service wages and conditions on the basis of giving the least that will attract the men. That is the negative policy, of the past, and that policy will not do. If the State is going into industry on a large

scale it has to get industrialists inside the Civil Service as good as on the outside. And it will not do to continue the penny-wise pound-foolish policy of the past.
I want to say one word, if I may, about what I think is a natural apprehension in the country, and which is a political problem of the first order. I think there is no doubt at all that the country has made up its mind as to whether it wants a planned economy, or capitalist anarchy, in Britain. But there is a lingering doubt on the subject of the liberty of the individual within a planned community. And a Labour Administration which proposes to nationalise a wide sector of industry should be very careful to give evidence of its concern, at every stage, for individual liberty within the area of the planned economy. We ought to move away from the Essential Work Order as rapidly as we can. For example, in the public service, to quote the industry I know best, we have not had the Essential Work Order all through the war. But now it has just been imposed on them. After the war with Germany and after the war with Japan is over, the Essential Work Order has suddenly been clamped down. I know the psychological effect of that. You do not get good work out of people who want to go some where else. We must move away from the controls of the Essential Work Order, and substitute for that the attraction of rewards and conditions of service in place of compulsion from the outside. And we must do that at the earliest possible moment. Particularly is it necessary for a Labour Government to do that.
The Government might do another thing, I do not suppose they will, but T hope they will set a good example in the ranks of the Parliamentary Labour Party by getting rid of that rigid, unrighteous, repressive, disciplinary Standing Order which forbids a member of the Labour Party ever to vote in the Lobbies down stairs against the decision of the party sitting upstairs.

Mr. Cluse: As far as this Debate is concerned, are not hon. Members on the other side in exactly the same position?

Mr. Brown: I think it is historically the case that the only party that has that sort of rule in its Standing Orders is the


Labour Party. I regard this as the complete antithesis of Parliamentary democracy, and I think they can get the results they want without it. The abandonment of it would do the party a great deal of good in the country, and would allow me to look upon it with a more favourable eye.

Mr. Close: It got rid of the hon. Member.

Mr. Brown: I do not know what the point of that is. I left the party in 1931, and I may say that most of its difficulties since then arc due to the fact that it has not yet applied for reaffiliation with me.
The last thing want to say is a personal word—and I hope it will not be taken unkindly—about the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford. I was distressed yesterday at parts of the Debate. It shocked me, and rather shamed me, to see the old lion being made the victim of bear-baiting. I want to say this, that those of us who sat in earlier Parliaments, the last Parliament particularly, however much we might disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, will never lose an eternal sense of indebtedness to him for his services to the country in the past. I know it is difficult, because he is as combative now as he was when he was an adolescent; he has never ceased to be a great boy, and it is extraordinarily difficult when he makes provocative speeches such as he has made. Personally, I think sometimes the best service he could render the country would be to write that history of the great war which ought to be written, and which he alone could write as it should be written. The longer he uses his great position to bolster up the Tory Party the worse it will become. Already, he has passed from admonishment to menace. And at his present rate of progress it will not be long before he passes from menace to Mosley!

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Brown: The speech he delivered to the party meeting of the Conservative Party in the mouth of a man who more than any other knows the value of words — [An. HON. MEMBER: "You were not there."] —I take the reports 'of speeches which appear. The language used by the right hon. Gentleman then was a deliberate incitement to class war in Britain. And

when it is followed up by the formation of strong-arm gangs by Tory headquarters one does wonder a little where we are getting to. Personally, I think the right hon. Gentleman's position is bound to go from bad to worse while he uses his incomparable authority to back up a party upon which the country has passed judgment, a judgment which I believe will not be recanted. I have never heard a case for a Motion of Censure so weak as the one made to-day! I have no doubt we shall defeat it overwhelmingly in the Lobbies. It is a good thing there should be a strong and vigorous Opposition in the Lobbies. But this Opposition will never function effectively unless it makes a mental note that there was an Election last July and that the verdict of that Election is not likely to be reversed.

6.55 p.m.

Mr. Kings mill: I rise with deference to claim the indulgence which this House always gives to a Member who is addressing himself to it in Debate for the first time, and I find myself in rather a quandary because it is a custom that one should be non-controversial in a maiden speech. I only wish I had taken the advice of the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) who, when he was congratulating two maiden speakers last night, said that it was far better to be as controversial as one could on these occasions because it was the only time one could be controversial without being answered back.
If we examine the field of our present practical difficulties and look at the difficulties in housing, in mining, in agriculture, and in industry generally, we find one common denominator which goes through them all, and that is shortage of manpower. Each has its own particular difficulty, but that is common to all. One cannot but agree that the present scheme for demobilisation is good on its merits. It was, admittedly, put into operation at a time when we could not foresee the end of the Japanese war. It has worked, by and large, very well, but right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite have told us this afternoon that it is impossible to break it, because if we do, we have nothing to fall back on. I suggest that the Bevin Scheme as it is generally termed, has not been working 100 per cent. for some time past. There are hundreds of officers, non-commis-


sioned officers and men who are well past their release dates now, and who are now serving in foreign theatres of war because they are essential to some particular job.
That being the case, I feel that we should attack this problem in a realistic rather than a sentimental sense, and I think this can be done. We know that the great difficulty of the moment, so far as the Far East is concerned, is shortage of shipping. That being the case, are we to keep the scheme going for that one reason? I suggest it is not necessary. We have heard also from hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the other side, that there is no adquate compensation which could be paid to a man who remains in the Armed Forces after his date of release, but I suggest that that argument carries no weight. To state that you cannot adequately compensate someone is surely no excuse at all for not attempting some form of compensation. One might as well say it is impossible adequately to compensate someone who loses his employment through no fault of his own and that, therefore, unemployment benefit should be withheld from him. It is childish.
Therefore, I would like to make a constructive suggestion on this subject. If it is found possible to demobilise the majority of men quicker than is being done now let us remember, a most important thing, that the essence of wise government is to do the greatest good to the greatest number. If it is accepted that we can demobilise men quicker compensation should be paid to those who may, through no fault of their own, have to remain behind. As a basis of compensation I suggest that whereas nowadays they are drawing 6d. a day as postwar credit the postwar credits of those men, and non-commissioned officers, should be raised to 7s. a day, which they can draw with their credits when their time comes to leave the Service. They will then find they have earned 10 guineas a month more than they would otherwise have been entitled to for that extra period. That would not in any way lower their morale, I think it would raise it, and there would be very few grumbles from any body. The same sort of scheme could apply to the commissioned officers of the three Services. I put forward that suggestion in all seriousness.
Everybody will agree that the releases under Class B scheme have not come up

to expectations. Let us examine why that is the case. To my mind it is due to one major factor, and that is that the men who come out under Class B, and they are men who are essential to industry, do not draw their credits when they are released under Class B but have to wait until their age group is released to become eligible for them. A man who comes out under Class B has exactly the same commitments to meet in civil life as a man under Class A and to make Class B releases more attractive, 100 percent successful, I suggest that a man be allowed to draw his credit when he comes out under Class B.
I should like to address one word to the President of the Board of Trade, who has spent a long time upon setting up working parties in many of the major industries of the country, and to put in a plea for the smaller industries. Some 90 percent. of the industrial wealth of this country is in small firms employing fewer than 100 workpeople, and they can make a very great contribution to our export trade. To take an example from my own constituency of Yeovil, we are the home of the great craft of glove-making, all of it done in small factories which have been compressed together during the war but which are anxious to do their best. They are held up by two things; first, lack of manpower and releases from the Forces; secondly, a lack of material, imported skins, which they use. Whereas the skins they use come in the vast majority of cases from South Africa and India, in other words from the sterling area, the glove trade have informed me—at least two of the bigger manufacturers in Yeovil have in formed me—that if they could get extra skins they could export the whole of their present turnover in gloves to South America, thereby getting dollar exchange. I hope the President of the Board of Trade will do his best to see that they are allowed to get that dollar exchange.
Lastly, I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman opposite that we are wasting or losing a lot of trained material in the Services because the men in the Services have been given no indication of the terms and conditions of future service. The Secretary of State for War will agree, I think, that the major shortage in the Army today is a shortage of those officers who will make company commanders and of N.C.O.s in the senior classes. They


are all due for early release under their age and service groups, and they do not know what the terms of their engagement will be if they stay on. Surely it is possible to publish those terms now and save some of those men who really want to stay in the Army from leaving it. By doing this we should get a well-balanced, well-trained and well-educated—from the point of view of military prowess—body of people in charge of our minor units. I know two officers and nine other ranks —one of the officers won a decoration and four of the other ranks won decorations—who have left the Army recently be cause they could not learn what the terms of service would be if they agreed to stay-on, as they were prepared to do. That is another aspect of the case which we shall have to face if we want to get 100 percent. efficiency in the Armed Forces of the Crown now that peace is here.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. W. Whiteley): Following up the information which the Leader of the House gave to hon. Members this after noon, I beg to move,
That the proceedings on any Motion for the Adjournment of the House to be moved by a Minister of the Crown be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House) for two hours after a quarter past Nine o'Clock.
Question put, and agreed to.

GOVERNMENT POLICY (MOTION OF CENSURE)

Question again proposed,
That this House regrets that His Majesty's Government are neglecting their first duty, namely, to concentrate with full energy upon the most urgent and essential tasks of the reconversion of our industries from wartime production to that of peace, the provision of houses, the speedy release of men and women from the Forces to Industry, and the drastic curtailment of our swollen national expenditure; and deplores the pre-occupation of His Majesty's Ministers, impelled by Socialist theory, with the formulation of long-term schemes for nationalisation, creating un certainty over the whole field of industrial and economic activity, in direct opposition to the best interest of the nation, which demands food, work and homes.

7.6 p.m.

Mr. Daines: I would like to make the usual claim for the

indulgence of the House towards a maiden speaker, the more so because to sit here listening to point after point that one would like to make being taken up by previous speakers is a rather devastating experience. In offering my apologies to the House for attempting to address it I can assure the House I will endeavour to be quite sincerely non controversial. The main emphasis of speakers when dealing with economic problems has been upon the problem of loosening the bonds that are binding production, but I want to direct attention to distribution. One of the facts we have to face in our economic system is that distribution costs are more and more becoming a disproportionate part of the price of a commodity when it reaches the customer. Let me illustrate what has happened in one field that comes under the auspices of the Board of Trade. I am not going to criticise His Majesty's Government, but it is a fact that the current arrangements, so far as dry goods are concerned, which they entered into were a confirmation of a policy that was arrived at with the trade.
In the case of the much vaunted Non-Utility Clothing Order we find that to produce an overcoat of 28 inches in length the wholesaler is allowed a selling price of £6 8s. 5d. The retailer to whom it passes gets it for £8 0s. 6d., but the customer gets it for £14. After due allowance of one-sixth of the figure of £8 is made for Purchase Tax, the fact remains that the customer pays as much again for the coat when it is received as the manufacturer has got. I wish to dwell on this point, because I think it is a very serious problem in our economic system. Take, for example, the average woman's coat, the type of garment which is detailed in this list. The wool comes from Australia, the cotton from America, the dye perhaps from one part of Europe, and they are brought together by a combination and an organisation of human labour involving possibly 20 or 30 pairs of hands which are put into the final product when it leaves the manufacturer. Yet if that same coat is taken perhaps 10 or 20 miles, the cost is equal to the whole of the previous processes. I suggest to H.M. Government that we want a working party not only for production but for inquiry and action in regard to distribution. I submit that we cannot afford the constant wastage of manpower that is taking place in distribution today.
Let me refer briefly to the question of food. When this war broke out the Government and the importers of wheat arrived at an agreement, which in effect was a proposal to stabilise their existing profits, irrespective of what service they rendered in the buying of foodstuffs. In actual fact, in the grain trade market the whole import of wheat became a government function. Nevertheless, the margin of profit to the folk who deal—I want to give the right technical terms—in futures and in option deals received throughout the war, and still do receive, exactly the same financial reward as was stabilised at the beginning of the war. I believe the Government must come to a decision as regards the import of food to this country, and particularly as regards the import of wheat. We cannot afford to go back to that same type of abracadabra to which an hon. Member opposite referred, and I suggest that in the importing of essentials into this country there are labyrinths which are just as sinister as those which he imagines.
I desire to say a word or two on the subject of wage policy. It is my misfortune that the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. T. Brown) has dealt with most of my points, but there are one or two which I would like to emphasise. In the past, this country got out of the problem of unpleasant and laborious work by the whiplash of unemployment. We got people to shift the coal, to bake our bread and to go to the docks because we were always able to recruit that labour as a result of unemployment which was the driving factor. The root cause of the disturbances which exist today is that the worker fealises that the whiplash of unemployment is not there to drive him. It may be that I have got my logic wrong, but during the course of this Debate there has been constant reiteration from right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposite to the question of the profit motive. I submit that the logical corollary of the profit motive is to buy cheap and to sell dear. If it is said that the profit motive is a virtue when hon Gentlemen opposite control it, then I submit that the labourer has the same right to apply the same logic to the labour that he has to sell. The workers of this country are prepared to accept and to give quite a lot, but what they are not prepared to stand for is the operation of the Essential Work Order as

far as their labour is concerned when it has to go into the making of private profit.
I agree with most of what the hon. Member for Rugby has said. I do not believe we will be able to continue with what is, in effect, a controlled economy in a perfectly free market with the same sort of trade union operations which went on before the war. We must come to an agreed policy with the trade unions. In fact, I think we have to do more than that. I will make a perfectly frank ad mission. 1 believe that one reason for the opposition of the workers which has shown itself in strikes, is that they are against the boss because for years they have been brought up in an attitude of mind which puts them against the Government. They are against things, and not for things. I believe we have contribubted to it in some way through endeavouring to mobilise political power by teaching them to be against things rather than for things. It is a perfectly frank admission, and I make it for what it is worth. I also believe, however, that, just as the workers of this country saw the overriding necessity for unity during the war, if the right approach is made to them now they will unite with an over riding sense of purpose that the profit motive can never give to them. I believe the time has come when the Government should give to all the people of this country and the workers in particular, a sense of over-riding purpose, a social motive and a sense of mission which, so far in the reconstruction of the life of this country, they have never yet had.

7.18 p.m.

Mr. Butcher: I am obliged to you, Mr. Speaker, for enabling me to catch your eye, because it gives me the high honour and privilege of congratulating two hon. Gentlemen on their maiden speeches which, although quite dissimilar in character, had one thing in common and that is the sincerity with which they were uttered and the background of informed opinion from which each came. The hon. Gentleman the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Daines) spoke with authority on problems of distribution, and we shall look forward with pleasure to his future contributions on this subject. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Kings mill) is, if I may say so, one of the fortunate people who have come into this House as a


Conservative at the Election with a great majority. That is something for which to be very thankful, but when one considers his great record in the field and his leadership of men, at so early an age, and then the charm and modesty of his maiden speech, for him the future is bright indeed. I will address myself to this Motion of Censure on His Majesty's Government, which has, at least, already had one or two good effects. It has given the party opposite an opportunity for cheering the Prime Minister with the same zest and zeal which they usually reserve for the converted rebels such as the Minister of Health or the Minister of Fuel and Power.
He will forgive me saying that I thought I saw the hand of the astute party manager, that behind the enthusiasm there was a little of the party machine. This Government, whatever else they may have failed to do, are achieving one common result. Slowly but surely they are welding out of many scattered elements in the country a single National Opposition, which from today onward will steadily grow in power and authority both in this House and outside. That is the price which the Government must pay for the drudgery, inefficiency and arrogance which have already so sharply characterised their administration. I speak for one of those elements, small in numbers in this House, but not inconsiderable in the feeling it reflects in the country, which by sentiment and conviction is driven in escapably into that Opposition. It need not necessarily have been so, and person ally I sincerely regret it. There is so much we might have done in partnership in this Parliament. There is so wide a field for common action for the recovery of the nation in which all parties might gladly have- co-operated, along the lines set out so well by the President of the F.B.I. the other day. There are so many directions in the development of social and economic welfare in which Liberals could eagerly have contributed their share. Looking at the state of the country today, it is deplorable that the Government, for the sake of their party nostrums, should have scorned and deliberately repulsed the help of Liberal representatives, with the great reserve of constructive support which was, and is, at their disposal.
I understand that the Lord President of the Council is to speak this evening. I

can well imagine him preening himself in anticipation of a Party triumph. He obviously enjoys the role of chief cockerel. This is the wrong time of the year for roosters to crow. Unless he is careful he will attract too much attention to him self. He will need no public relations officer. Unless he is careful, he might even be given an administrative job. Already the country is noticing the failures on the Government Front Bench, and the right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council might be given a job of speeding up demobilisation, or of providing homes for the people or even clothes for them to wear. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about ideas?"] When it comes to ideas, I say that I represent a great Liberal tradition. If any hon. Gentlemen opposite who desire to interrupt would rise in their place in accordance with custom, I will give way.

Mr. William Williams: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he has not left that tradition well behind?

Mr. Butcher: If the hon. Member will allow me to develop my argument, I will return to this matter later. 1 represent that area of the Eastern Counties, that stronghold of Liberalism, which sent such a large and important phalanx of Liberals to the Parliament of 1906, and they co-operated with the forerunners of the present Labour Party in the achievements of that Parliament, which were based on a conception of life that acclaimed happiness and plenty—not misery and scarcity; that exalted universal kindliness, not class antagonism; that had faith in the ultimate wisdom and initiative of the individual. Above all it respected as a first principle of government the rights, privileges and fundamental liberties of the subject in relation to the State. There is nothing in the Liberal faith, as I have learnt it, that in any circumstances, short of war itself, condones the intrusion upon personal freedom which this Government not so much practises—that might be permissible for the moment—but plainly seeks to make permanent in the life of the community. It is for these reasons that my hon. Friends and I—and, I have no doubt, sooner or later so will the great mass of Liberal opinion in the country—find our selves confidently and resolutely in sup port of the Vote of Censure. We are willing to ally ourselves as a" separate


entity with all those whose conscience calls upon them to rally to the National Opposition during the lifetime of this Parliament. In that way I am very sure we shall best serve the State, and in time to come, if not now, win the gratitude of the British people. It is not only that the actions of the Government—present and potential—offend against the established rights of the citizen, against his free choice of home, against permitting the ex-Serviceman, with 22 years in the Regular Army, including imprisonment in Singapore, to establish himself in business, against right of choice of work, of investment, of personal initiative within the law. Though these are in themselves revolutionary actions in peace, striking at the very roots of the British way of life, that is not all; they offend equally against every rule of common sense and good administration.
What is our country's problem at the present time? I leave aside foreign policy, because here we find little to quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary. The problem is, How most quickly and easily can we convert the national economy from the stern conditions of war to the more kindly and prosperous conditions of peace? That I believe is everybody's aim. The crucial question is, how is it to be done? Surely, common sense and appreciation of the characteristics of the British people point to one way, and one way only, and that is by engaging the enthusiasm of the people in a great combined voluntary effort to restore trade and industry, out of which rising standards of living may be secured for all. It was by inspired voluntarism that the Spanish Armada was defeated, by the same spirit Napoleon was humbled; it was this spirit that caused the greatest and finest host of volunteers to rush to the colours in 1914 and 1915, and it was this same spirit which in recent years manned the Civil Defence Services and filled the ranks of the Home Guard and inspired our people to work in the fields and in the factories that victory might be achieved. It is in this spirit that the problems of Peace must also be faced—the inborn, irradicable spirit of free choice in response to confident leadership rallies the British people to supreme effort.

Mr. Logan: Can the hon. Gentleman tell me of any period when the Liberal Party was in power in which any of these things about which he is speaking as being inborn were put into operation?

Mr. Butcher: Does the hon. Gentleman venture to suggest that man was not freer before the war than he is at the present time?

Mr. Logan: He was free to starve.

Mr. Butcher: He was free to choose his own job.

Mr. Logan: He could not get one.

Mr. Butcher: He was free to choose at which shop he would buy his food, and he was free to build a house, and to spend more than £10 on repairs to his dining or drawing room, and, above all, he was free to change his job without the consent of a Government official.

Mr. Logan: Is the hon. Member aware that we never had such poverty in the nation as during the time of the Liberal Party, and that such poverty was never known before and will never be known again?

Mr. Butcher: The leadership that this country needs is not forthcoming at the present time. If the leadership is not inspired, what is required is that efforts should be made, not by Whitehall, but by millions of individual contributions in the country. It must be based on hard and sustained work by the people them selves, of their own volition. I believe that that was the underlying principle of the four year plan of my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford. That was what distinguished his proposals so sharply from the confused and dispiriting compulsions of the present Government. His was a call to action to a free, enterprising people, a brave, determined, optimistic call that, if it could be repeated today, would energise the people and gladden their hearts.
How do the Government speak to the people? They speak to them in the tone of a dirge to a ragged band of displaced persons, in whose honesty and public spirit they have no confidence, in whose resilience they have no belief and in whose free choice they have no faith, and whom they therefore decide to rule


as children rather than lead as men. His Majesty's Ministers, instead of devoting themselves to the liberation of the people from their six years of bureaucratic and military thraldom, instead of freeing those marvellous springs of enterprise that gave us, for four centuries, first place in the world, instead of encouraging a new voluntary effort to wrench prosperity from the ruins of war, have had, as their chief thoughts and actions the fashioning of a new thraldom for the years to come. Stage by stage it will rob men of the opportunity and prize of great daring, and stage by stage it will extend controls over life and livelihood and flatten the high peaks of endeavour that once illuminated the world, until the whole land becomes a dull level where none but prefabricated mediocrities may lie at ease, and from which all glory and inspiration will have gone. [HON. MEMBERS: "Cheer up."]
It has been said that the Motion is a little premature. If you see the car which contains almost all that you love and wish to preserve proceeding in the wrong direction in the care of an in efficient and quarrelsome crew, you cannot shout "Beware" too soon. My hon. Friends and I share the belief that even yet, if the Government will cast aside their party interests and forget the shibboleths which they used to mumble years ago, before the atomic bomb was invented, they might still inspire the people with enthusiasm in the national cause, and all will yet be well. It is because I have no confidence in their judgment or in their leadership that I shall go into the Lobby against them tonight.

7.34 p.m.

Mr. Piratin: I cannot say that it gives me very great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Butcher). There are some things I should like to have followed up in what he said, were it not for my promise to Mr. Speaker that I would be brief. I should like to follow him on the question of freedom. In the years before the war I was free to sign on at the employment exchange in Stepney— perfectly free, though I was keen to work. If the hon. Member had had that kind of experience in the pre-1939 days he would not call it freedom so glibly as he has done in speaking on this Motion of Censure.
There is no doubt of the outcome of this Debate. I am confident that the right hon. Gentleman who tabled the Motion did not expect to win over the Ministerial Benches, but I have begun to wonder in the last few hours whether we are going to see any honest men on the Opposition' Benches who will vote against the Motion of Censure in view of what has been said this afternoon, and the devastating speech made by the Prime Minister against the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill). I submit that this Debate is a sham. There have been ample opportunities, and there will be further opportunities in future, to make constructive criticisms. For that reason I do not agree with some of the points that have been put forward by Labour Members, because I believe that they need not have taken this opportunity of making some of their excellent points of criticism. On this occasion we should look to the Opposition Benches to say exactly what it is that they are criticising.
Having listened at very great length to the right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) and, today, at even greater length to the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill), I can not understand exactly what the Opposition are censuring. I am certain that the Prime Minister should have convinced him, had he been in an honest mood, that he was not censuring anything except the Opposition benches. What is the purpose of the Debate? Firstly, it is intended to be mischievous. It is intended to confuse the public at a critical period, when we are about to hear the result of the financial negotiations at Washington, and when 300,000 men are coming out of the Armed Forces each month and want to know what the future is to hold for them. I believe that the Motion is deliberately intended to be mischievous. Even "The Times" admits that the Motion of Censure is premature.
I suggest there is an ulterior motive, mischievous in character, in this tabling of a Motion of Censure. I believe the motive is, deliberately and irresponsibly, the disruption of the Government's programme. We have listened to the Opposion day in and day out. Last week during the Committee stage of the Finance Bill all kinds of Amendments were moved, which were sheer nonsense, in order to waste the time of this House. These two days' Debate are merely a


waste of time, and we should remember that the Opposition even wanted three days.
The further purpose of the Debate asked for by the Opposition was to rally the Tories, and I believe that it has been a miserable failure in that respect. It gave me great pleasure sitting here—I have a privileged position because I can look down upon all the Opposition from here—to watch their faces when the Prime Minister was speaking this afternoon. Not only did the right hon. Member for Wood-ford look discomfited at the retorts of the Prime Minister, but many other Members of the Opposition benches were most embarrassed.
It is possible that the right hon. Member for Woodford might have had a very responsive audience at Friends' House but when his speech here is examined, neither the right hon. Gentleman nor his cohorts display the realism they so often refer to. Such realism as exists in the ranks of the capitalist class these days is displayed by Sir Clive Baillieu, and in the report of the Commission on the Gas Industry; statements which hon. Members opposite prefer to avoid.
The Motion is in two parts, the first regretting
that His Majesty's Government are neglecting their first duty, namely, to concentrate with full energy upon the most urgent and essential tasks of the re-conversion of our industries from wartime production to that of peace, the provision of houses, the speedy release of men and women from the Forces to industry and the drastic curtailment of our swollen national expenditure.
and the second deploring
the pre-occupation of His Majesty's Ministers, impelled by Socialist theory, with the formulation of long-term schemes for nationalisation creating uncertainty over the whole field of industrial and economic activity, in direct opposition to the best interest of the nation, which demands food, work and homes.
I claim that the Opposition are not concerned about the first part. Previous speakers had not much to say about it. What they are really concerned about was the second part. I believe that it requires a little examination. We have sat on these benches exactly two months. [An HON. MEMBER: "Too long."] That is a matter of opinion, which the public will decide, and I will come to that. We have sat on these benches for two months, and in that period we have had a mass of

legislation before us, and we have had Debates on various matters. In all this time, there has only been one Bill on nationalisation, and that concerned the Bank of England. Hon. Members opposite, who had ample opportunity for putting their criticisms, did not put down a single Amendment on the Bank of England Bill, nor did any organisation associated with them.
That is the only nationalisation Bill introduced in the past two months, yet today we have this protest made by them about the Government's formulation of nationalisation Measures. I submit that what they are really concerned with is not the nationalisation Measures, about which, to use a colloquialism, they do not care two hoots; what they are really concerned about is what compensation they are going to get when the nationalisation Measures are introduced. What they are trying to do now is to distort and confuse the minds of hon. Members on these benches, and of the public outside, in order that they shall get the best deal possible when the time comes for nationalising the coal mines, railways and other industries. I believe that I am voicing the views of many people in this House when I say that this Debate, apart from some excellent speeches made from these benches, have been a waste of time.
I believe that the Opposition will, in the main, go into the "Aye" Lobby when it comes to a Division, but I believe like wise that the will do so with their tongues in their cheeks, because they will have noticed in a national newspaper this morning an account of a Gallup survey—announced this morning, by the sheerest coincidence—which shows that 80 percent. of the public who had an opinion on the matter had confidence in this Government. That is a much higher percentage than at the General Election in July. The figures were: 57 percent. of all who were asked signified their approval of the Government's Measures, and as 27 percent. had no opinion, 80 percent. of those who expressed an opinion agreed with the steps being taken by this Government. Let the Members of the Opposition concern themselves with this factor. Let them realise that though there was a big gap between their policy and the beliefs of the public in July, that gap has now greatly widened.
I believe that there is a lot to be said for what the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) said earlier this evening, when he spoke of the "strong arm method" which the right hon. Member for Woodford had in mind in the speech he made at the Friends Meeting House last week. This talk about bodyguards and this threat of fundamental differences which are going to emerge in a few years, made by the right hon. Member for Wood-ford— Is he suggesting unconstitutional means of opposition? I believe I have the right to ask that. Is the Father of the House, if such an expression may be used, suggesting unconstitutional means? Surely the Members of the Opposition have become bankrupt. I think the statement made by the hon. Member for Rugby is a true one— they are damned, and they know it. Conservative politics no longer interest the public. What we have heard in these two days from the Opposition is an expression of demagogy, which is not striking a responsive note anywhere among the public. I, therefore, believe that the character of this Debate, on both sides of the House, should encourage the Government to carry on with the measures they are now taking more expeditiously even than they have begun.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. Peter Thorneycroft: We have reached the concluding stages of what was, inevitably, a controversial Debate, and I do not suppose that by the time I have finished my remarks it will have become any less controversial. His Majesty's Government can make no complaint as to that. The right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council has been almost importunate in his desire, in recent weeks, to promote what he calls "a row" in the House of Commons. He has not come in yet to hear me but, no doubt, he is on his way. If the right hon. Gentleman spent half the time and energy that he uses in seeking to provoke the Opposition in governing the affairs of this country, perhaps our national affairs would be going rather faster and better than they are. I hope very much that the right hon. Gentleman, when he replies to this Debate—and no doubt my remarks can be passed on to him by a colleague—will remember that he is no longer in the Opposition, that he has passed out of the era of the Gol-

Lanez pamphlets, and will talk not in the language of invective, but of statesman ship.
For our part, we make no complaint that this is a controversial Debate. It would, indeed, have been less than courteous on the part of the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who sit behind me had we denied the Government the occasion which they sought, had we re fused to give them the opportunity of facing up, in a realistic manner, to the real problems that confront the British people at the present time, an opportunity which, I am bound to say, they have so far lamentably missed. I believe that in the last resort the result of this Debate will not be judged simply by the number of votes in the Lobbies, or by the vigour with which party doctrine is put forward on one side or the other. I believe that from the point of view of the public the result of this Debate will be judged on the question of which side faces up, in the most realistic manner, to the vital problems that confront us at the present time.
It falls to me to summarise the arguments, to marshal the case in favour of this Motion of Censure, and I think the first thing I had better do is to say just what is the charge against the Government.[Interruption.] After all, even the meanest criminal in these islands is entitled to know the charge against him. Let there be no misunderstandings as to the charge. The charge is not that His Majesty's Government are confronted with great and complex problems, human and material. Those problems would confront any Government charged with the affairs of this country at the present time, inevitably, after six years of war. The charge is not that in the Speech from the Throne or in the statement of the right 'hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council there were some vague references to nationalisation. This Debate is not a Debate between nationalisation and private enterprise; that issue hardly enters into it at all. [Interruption.] I know hon. Members quite appreciate what the charge is. The charge against His Majesty's Government is simply this: that at a great moment in the history of this country, they have put a party political creed in front of the requirements of the nation. They have sought to placate a section of their extremists even though it


means neglecting the welfare of the public as a whole. As the Lord President of the Council is now here, I want to recall to the House the statement which he made and which was in some respects the occasion of this Debate. There was nothing very novel either in the matter which that statement contained or indeed the manner in which it was delivered. What was its real purpose? Its real purpose was not to enable Ministers to open discussions with various industries. An executioner does not enter into discussion with the victim as to how the head is to be laid upon the block.

Dr. Morgan: History shows that they do.

Mr. Thorneycroft: The object of the statement was not to reassure industry. The actual date of execution is not a very reassuring thing. The real purpose of the statement was to satisfy the sense of doctrinal propriety among a section of the right hon. Gentleman's party. In so far as the right hon. Gentleman is seeking to satisfy the extremists in his own party, he will fail. In so far as he seeks to pursue the policy which he laid down, it will hamper rather than help him in the discharge of his real job of governing the country. Does anybody imagine that those who voted for successive resolutions at Labour conferences in favour of whole sale nationalisation will be satisfied with that statement? Does anybody think that the 48 percent. of the Labour conference who voted for affiliation with the Communist Party are going to be satisfied? Is the hon. and learned Member for North Hammersmith (Mr. Pritt),who is so busily working his passage back to the party, going to be satisfied?

Mr. Pritt: Yes.

Mr. Thorneycroft: The hon. and learned Gentleman will have to consult a little more fully with the other Members of his party. I do not believe the right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council wished to pursue this policy. I think he is a practical-minded person who wants to get on with the job. Let him admit that this statement was not in any sense intended as a revolutionary' manifesto. It was a belated attempt to withdraw from what was rapidly becoming a wholly untenable position. I know the difficulties of the right hon. Gentleman and the Government. They were elected with a huge

majority, their supporters sang "The Red Flag"; they nationalised the Bank of England, and they kept Lord Catto to run it. Then they had to persuade the extremists that that was a Socialist revolution. I ask the right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council, quite seriously, to put the cards on the table face upwards. Is this a first instalment, or is it a last territorial demand? Is he every now and then, to satisfy another demand, going to throw another industry into the maw of State control? That will be a policy of political danegeld. Unless the right hon. Gentleman is very careful, he will go down in history with Ethelred the Unready.
With those few introductory observations, let me come to the terms of the Motion. The President of the Board of Trade, and indeed the Prime Minister, sought to deflect the blow from them selves on to the people who had elected them. I think that was rather a timid approach to the matter. Let them face up to it themselves. The job of the Opposition is to focus the attention of the Government on to those matters which are really exercising the mind of the public at the present time. I ask the Government to leave aside for a moment their dreams of Marxist philosophy, to forget, even for an hour, the views of the President of the Board of Trade about the exports of this country, to forget the wider interpretations of their mandate. Let them think of what the ordinary British family is thinking at the present time—a man, his wife and two children. I want to be absolutely fair to the Government. Let us imagine the family voted Socialist at the General Election [Interruption.] I hope I shall not be interrupted, because I have a limited time. Does anybody imagine that the breadwinner of that family rushes home in the evening, waving the newspaper in the air, and saying, "My dear, at last our dreams have come true, they have nationalised Cables and Wireless"? Does anybody think that the wife, looking tired, says, "I have been worrying all day in case the Minister of Fuel and Power cannot get over the financial and economic difficulties of compensating the coalowners"? What sort of a world do hon. Members opposite live in if they think there is this mania for nationalisation?
A Serviceman travelling back from weekend leave does not look tired because


he has been contemplating the difficulties of co-ordinating road and rail transport or dealing with problems of wasteful com petition. A member of the public can travel a very long way today before he finds two people competing to give him a service. The fact is that the ordinary member of the public does not give a fig whether you nationalise railway companies or whether you do not. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is where the hon. Gentleman is wrong."] Let us face up to the realities. There is all this talk about a Socialist Utopia, but what are the people really thinking about? Ordinary persons want much simpler things than that. They want shoes for the children, they want shorter queues, they want an end to the frustration of finding nothing at the end of the queue when they get there, they want to move about more easily, they want houses to live in, and after six years of war they want, not un naturally, a little more laughter and a little more pleasure. They look to the Government to make it possible for them to get those things.
The Government, therefore, will be judged less on their political doctrines and more on their administrative competence or incompetence, as the case may be. It would really be idle to pretend that their absorption with plans for nationalisation is not interfering seriously with the whole administrative apparatus of the country. One has not got to look further than the Front Bench opposite. Those Ministers whose ability of mind we can most admire, even if we do not agree with their political opinions, are concentrating on the job of long-term plans for nationalisation. All the great problems of demobilisation and resettlement, and getting the wheels of our industries turning again, are handed over to what I might term the weaker brethren. [HON. MEMBERS: "Names."] By the "weaker brethren" I mean those Ministers who are watched by hon. Members behind them of a more ambitious turn of mind. If any right hon. Gentleman opposite is doubtful as to whether he falls into that category, let him look behind him. He will find a number of hon. Gentlemen behind him watching him rather like vultures—[Interruption. ]

Mr. Deputy - Speaker(Mr. Hubert Beaumont): These interruptions are apt to increase the length of the speech.

Mr. Thorneyeroft: I am anxious to allow time for the right hon. Gentleman who is to reply. But the thing goes further down than I have indicated. It goes right down into the ranks of the Civil Service at the present time. There are a very limited number of actually first grade civil servants. These men are wholly occupied at present on long-term plans, and the day-to-day ad ministration is done by the second grade. We are playing the Wednesday team, with disastrous results. Take the Ministry of Fuel and Power. Does anybody imagine for a moment that, at that Ministry, the first-class officers have an opportunity of really dealing with administration? Their whole time is occupied in trying to solve these immense complications of the nationalisation of the coal industry which the Minister has just discovered after 40 years of advocating it. The administrative burden would be heavy in any case but, on top of it, we have had superimposed this extra burden, and the fact is that, day by day and week by week, it takes longer to get an answer from a Government Department. It takes longer to get a licence, and each delay there means another delay in a particular branch of industry which is affected. Each delay in that branch must mean delays in all the many co-related branches of industry which are affected by it and so the whole machine, at a moment when we ought to be going forward, is quietly and slowly coming to a standstill.
I challenge the right hon. Gentleman who is to reply. Is he really going to dignify the miserable trickle of consumer goods by the name of reconversion of industry? The rebirth of enterprise and a great nation turning over from war to peace—while there is this miserable flow coming out at the present time? I must say that all these problems go back to manpower. It is the basis of all these matters—the question of houses, the pro vision of goods, for home consumption and export, and the many questions of agricultural production as well—all go back to the question of finding the men to do it.
What I felt, during this Debate, was the most astonishing feature of the Government was their extraordinary complacency about this matter. They seem to be perfectly satisfied, I am bound to say that if anybody thinks the


Motion of Censure has done nothing useful, they would do well to study the speech of the Prime Minister. For the first time, in this terrible and tragic situation, the rate of release in this country, which was actually going to decrease after Christmas, has now been altered. If this Motion of Censure achieves nothing else, we have done that. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but will the right hon. Gentleman say why it was not done before? The fact is that, so far as this country is concerned, our release rate is far behind that of the Americans, who in many respects have a very much more difficult task to face. The Prime Minister, when he spoke, referred to the fatal clamour of interested parties. The demand for demobilisation is not the fatal clamour of interested parties; it comes from the nation as a whole, because it is a great national need.
I believe that, in dealing with this matter, there has been something of a false approach in this Debate and a tendency to talk about the details of the Bevin scheme or some other scheme, or the demands of the generals or the difficulties of the Civil Service. I believe that, in the last resort, it is not a question of a particular scheme so much as a question of administration. I was not in the House of Commons during the last big demobilisation Debate, but: T read the speeches, and contrasted the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) with the Departmental answer read by the Minister of Labour, and I ask anybody who read those speeches to judge which of these two men could get the men out first. In any event, the Bevin scheme only laid down the question of priorities, and 1 remember that the Minister of Labour said that it could be speeded up to any extent desired. Well, it wants speeding up a lot at the present time, and, if it cannot be speeded up in its present form, consideration will have to be given to some other scheme.
I doubt if the bottle neck is the scheme at all. I think the fault lies much nearer —on the Front Bench opposite. I think the fault is the inability of the Government to reach certain decisions. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to tell us what is the size of the Armed Forces he is aiming at after the war? What is the method of recruitment going to be? The

hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Kingsmill) gave an illustration in an extremely able maiden speech, and said that men were leaving the Forces now because they did not know the terms on which the future Armed Forces are going to be recruited. Will the Lord President tell us whether he supports the principle of compulsory military service? These are fundamental matters. Let us make up our minds of the size of the Armed Forces at which we are aiming, how they are to be recruited, and then get the men out as quickly as we can.
I turn now to the question of housing. I suppose that on no matter in this country will the people be more rigorous in com paring Socialist promise with Socialist performance than on the question of housing, and it really is no good for the President of the Board of Trade, with an almost Jesuitical skill, trying to create an alibi on the ground of housing sites. We have had so many Debates that hon. Members on all sides all know that housing sites are not the difficulty. We have got all the sites we want; we are shortly going to have all the inspectors we want, but we have still got no houses. The hon. and gallant Member for Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) has described that attempt to create an alibi as political chicanery. I think he was generous in the interpretation he put upon it. The Minister of Health has been most careful to avoid giving any figure he wants to evade the more grandiose language which his supporters used on the hustings at the Election. The housing problem, it was said, could be dealt with in a fortnight.

Sir S. Cripps: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not in the House when I dealt with that earlier.

Mr. Thorneycroft: 1 was in the House.

Sir S. Cripps: Then I am surprised at the hon. Member repeating it.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am repeating it for this especial purpose: it is all very well to come along months after an election and deny a statement—

Sir S. Cripps: That was what the right hon. Gentleman did yesterday about his speech in "The Times."

Mr. Thorneycroft: That is a very funny answer even for a lawyer to put forward. However, I will leave the point. But


what of these promises? At that time the Socialist Party was wooing the electorate, and the right hon. Gentlemen opposite must hope that the British public will not compare too closely the weeks of courtship with the years of possession. It will not be easy for them. Too many of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite have condemned in the most derisive terms the target set by the Coalition Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health himself-in a book called "Why Not Trust the Tories?" by "Celticus"—translated, for the benefit of people like myself who cannot understand Latin, as Mr.Aneurin Bevan —speaking of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Croydon (Mr. Willink) said this:
He told us that in the first year after the war 100,000 houses will be built and 200,000 houses will be put in hand—not finished, mind you—in the second year. That promise is what the Prime Minister in his broadcast of March, 1944, described as the first line of attack of the problem. Not much of a blitzkrieg, is it? It has taken five years of governmental labouring to give birth to that mouse.
That was five years of war. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health is now dealing with the problem in peace and, so far, he has not produced a house, let alone a mouse. The fact is that houses are not built by oratory. It is a pity, because, if they were, the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health would do quite well. [An HON. MEMBER: "Where is he?"] I expect he has some reason to be elsewhere. They are not built by Acts of Parliament, they are built by bricklayers, plasterers and plumbers. What are the Government doing about that? Let me take the most favourable case that can be put forward, the case of one of the Government's own sup porters—the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Jennie Lee) who ought to be reasonably well disposed towards the Minister of Health. She said, as to Class B releases, that the Government were failing as to 50 per cent. That is the judgment of one of the Government's own supporters. What is the target at which they are aiming? The target is a building force by May of 750,000—rather less than that proposed by the Coalition Government. Not much of a blitzkreig is it? I challenge the right hon. Gentleman who is to reply—but he has gone away. He really ought to be able to learn to take

it. I challenge the Government—[Interruption.] Now that the Lord President has returned, perhaps I may remind him that we are dealing still, I am afraid, with housing. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us, "Yes" or "No"? Are they seeking to reach the target of house building set by the Coalition Government? Do they still regard it as hopelessly inadequate or not? I want a plain "Yes" or "No."
But there are matters worse than that. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health is in doctrinal trouble with his conscience. The whole policy is to be forced through the artificial bottleneck of the local authority building programme, and what do his own chosen instruments say about it at the present time? They complain of the administrative turmoil, the search from Department to Department without ever finding the decision they want. Even the right hon. Gentleman himself is pretty concerned about it because, realising the deficiencies of his own arrangements, he has created a vast system of Government flying squads—the whole edifice garnished with a revolving credit of £100 million. Money will not buy him out of his difficulties. Merely putting £100 million, on a market already short of men and materials will hinder rather than help him. The real trouble with the right hon. Gentleman is his persecution mania. Many of us who count builders, large and small, amongst our friends, would have the greatest difficulty in recognising them amongst the class of vicious social parasites into which he seeks to lump them all. So we are to wait months, as I understand it, months, in case some builder somewhere or another makes a profit, a bit more than the statistical expert at the Board of Trade thinks is proper.
I would say this. Let us stop this non sense. Let us stop talking about socio logical and biological differences and get houses. We cannot go on like this. Would the right hon. Gentleman answer this question? At some time he knew something about the London County Council. I challenge him to answer this. Is it not the fact that only 392 operatives are building houses for them at the moment? The great City of London with 392 operatives. How many houses have,


in fact, been built in that area since this Government took office? Can we have the figure? We have not had many answers to the questions we have asked in this Debate, practically none at all, and I am hoping that the right hon. Gentleman will give us some. I say with regard to housing, let us set a target and let us use all the enterprise we have, public and private, in the attainment of it.
I turn, rather appropriately, from the Minister of Health to that will o' the wisp the question of the export trade, which is the special playground of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. He made yesterday a long speech which, in many ways, if I may be allowed to say so, was a very brilliant speech. He said he was going to deal with the economic aspects of the matter. If I had the time—and I may have—I might say just where he failed to deal with all the fundamental economic aspects of the matter. He talked to us about automatic licences for exporting jewellery. What an automatic licence is, I do not know. If it is automatic, why have a licence? He condemned the profit motive with all the eloquence of the Fabian Society, and he maintained the position that you could promote exports by restricting an already limited home consumption. I want to remind him of one fact that is not hypothetical at all.

Mr. Messer: No fact is.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think the hon. Gentleman cannot have been in the House yesterday, or he would have heard a great many. The fact is that the export trade is going down. The fact is that in this quarter it is lower than it was in the quarter before. There may be some explanation for that but let us have the explanation. Why is the export trade in this country actually sinking at the present time? The figures are that the export trade in the last quarter was 99 and in the quarter before 102, and if the figures are wrong no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will correct me. I challenge him to do so. Quite apart from those figures, however, the gap between exports and imports is £561,000,000. The fact is that the right hon. Gentleman can preach austerity at home but he cannot preach austerity in the export markets of the world. They are not going to tighten

their belts while we put through a Socialist experiment here. If they cannot buy from us, they will buy from someone else, and we shall lose these markets. I suppose that I ought to say something constructive about this. What suggestions shall I make to the right hon. Gentleman? If I were pressed for an answer, I would use words hallowed by tradition:
Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.
If I were to use them it might raise memories and perhaps even provoke the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. M. Foot). The real lesson of this is that exports can only be obtained by private enterprise, and the best thing the right hon. Gentleman could do would be to encourage private enterprise to get on with the job, and build up the export trade. Do the Government depend on private enterprise or do they not? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman who is to reply will give us an answer. If they believe in private enterprise, has he the courage to get up and say we are going to start on with the profit motive and everything else that goes with it. That is really the test of the genuineness of the Government's approach to this matter.
I want to say a word about wage earners. The Government have not said very much on the points stated about wage earners put originally in the Debate by the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton). They were not dealt with by the Prime Minister or the President of the Board of Trade. The question he, and other people have put, and to which we want an answer is this: If you are to go inform an extensive system of planning, how are you going to decide what priority is to be accorded to the various industries in this country? In order to do that, it is not sufficient to draw up a blue print. You have to get the men into the industries you want stepped up, and out of the industries you want stepped down. Are the Government going to do that? Do they, or do they not, intend to go on with the direction of labour? We want a frank and full answer to that. We got a very evasive answer from the right hon. Gentleman. We want a plain English answer. There is another way of doing it. That is by increasing wages in the industry where you want men, and depressing them, or holding them level, in the industries where you do not. If that is the method to be


adopted by the Government, what do the trade unions think about it? What, in fact, is the Government's wage policy? Unless we know these things, there is a position of uncertainty which affects not only big industrialists, but every wage earner in industry today. I believe it is one of the fundamental, underlying causes for a great deal of industrial unrest which we are experiencing.
Few Governments have had a greater responsibility or a greater opportunity than the right hon. Gentleman's opposite. I do not under-estimate, and I have not sought in the course of these remarks to under-estimate, any of these difficulties. But I want to say this: I do not believe that the answers to these problems which confront the Government are to be found in the 1930 edition of the text books of any of the political parties. I do not believe it is sufficient for the Prime Minister, or any one else, to say that we have been preaching the same doctrine for 40 years, and that we ought to do something about it now. I think that there is every possible justification for holding ourselves free to adopt any remedy which human ingenuity can devise in order to solve these problems. I would support to the full the speech which was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan) yesterday. We have all in one way or another, in this country, poured out too much in blood, suffering and sacrifice to imagine that the owner ship of a railway company is the one thing which really matters. It cannot matter as much as all that. If you are to have an objective approach, you have to apply that objective approach quite honestly. You cannot torture the facts in order to try and adapt them into some kind of Marxist philosophy.
I believe that is what the right hon. Gentleman is trying to do at the present time, and I believe the reason he is trying to do it, is because he has a large and rather difficult party to handle. I know that party rather well. There are the trade unionists, very able men, some of them now a little elderly, but many of them in their hearts I think a little to the right wing of my own politics. There are a large number, mostly young men, whose surprise at finding themselves in the House of Commons is only equalled by their surprise at finding themselves

members of the Socialist Party. Thirdly, there is a body—inside and outside the House of Commons—and the right hon. Gentleman knows it as well as I do—who have faith in an economic system which is wholly alien to the desires and aspirations of the whole of the British people. The right hon. Gentleman has to make up his mind, some time, where he is going to stand among those rather shifting sands.
I have not the slightest doubt, that as we go forward in this country, we shall find any number of new difficulties and any number of new opportunities. I expect, as we do that, we may find many of the cherished customs of both big business and big trade unions will have to be adapted or altered, or perhaps, in some cases, ruthlessly eliminated. But of this I am quite certain, that if we are to tackle the immense and immediate problems that confront this country at the present time, we have to do it as a broadly united nation. If we choose this moment to seek to divide the nation into two halves, if we seek to condemn all those who work for profit, and laud all those who work for the State, that will be the pathway to disaster. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to make up his mind on this. We want men in this country who are prepared to talk, not for the trade unions or industrialists or any economic theory at all. We want men who are prepared to talk for England. It is just because we think that the Government are wholly failing in that task at the present time that we have put this Motion of Censure on the Paper and will support it in the Lobby.

8.28 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison): We have listened with interest to the speech which has just been made by the hon. Gentleman, and I think that I can say we have all admired his vigour and energy, and we were glad to hear it. I thought that he finished on rather dangerous ground, by saying how undesirable it was to divide the nation into two. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was beginning to look a little apprehensive as to where this led after his own story last week about The People versus the Socialists, which seemed to be a good effort to divide the nation into two. I congratulate the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport


on having put the Leader of the Opposition right on that point. He has advanced a theory, which I am bound to say flatters me a great deal, that I in vented this statement the other Monday, just in order to tickle the palates of my hon. Friends behind me, and particularly the Left Wing. It really is not true. There is no reason why I should have to tickle the palates of our supporters on this side of the House. They are in an extraordinary state of happiness at the present time, and, indeed, that state of happiness has been materially contributed to by the activities of the Opposition.
I believe that as long as this Labour Government are competent, intelligent, vigorous, bold, courageous, and as long as they have no fear of any vested interests that would stand in the way, the Labour Party will be united and happy. But if we were to take the advice-of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, and run ourselves upon the lines that we will forget the principles and the programme upon which we fought the election, and come to the conclusion that there are dangers in being courageous and bold, and that rather we will pursue a conservative line of policy, I agree that my hon. Friends behind me would become unhappy, and they would have a right to do so. Therefore, I am for the line, as are the Government, as is my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, of just going ahead and courageously and boldly living up to the principles and the programme on which we fought the Parliamentary General Election.
The hon. Gentleman says that nobody cares a rap for nationalisation. What is all the noise about? He said that nobody is interested. Why this Motion of Censure? Why did the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) go pallid and white, and obviously go into a great state of almost paralytic indignation? He also has been reproved by the hon. Gentleman, who has said that no body is really interested in this question of nationalisation. All right, we will bring the Bills along, if nobody is interested, and let them go through like that, quietly, and nobody need say a word about it. He says that what the people want is not nationalisation, but this, that and the other in the ordinary everyday comforts of

life. I know they do, of course they do. That is why they sent this Labour majority here. He advised all the Ministers on this bench outside a certain select few—I do not know who they are— "Look behind you; behind you are envious men." He was a Parliamentary Secretary on this bench for a few weeks, only a few weeks, and then ill-fortune fell upon him. We are glad to see him back, but it rather sounds as though he spent the whole of those three weeks looking behind him. However, he was not doing that to-night; he was good and courageous. I liked it, but I warn him that it is a bad habit to look over your shoulder in politics. Look ahead and bang at any body in the way, which is what he did with great vigour tonight. I ask my hon. Friends not to get demoralised by what ever befell the hon. Gentleman when he was at the Ministry of War Transport.
The hon. Gentleman said that the queues are getting longer. So did the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. I do not know what the evidence is for these allegations. It is the case, I admit, that neither the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition nor I stand in queues to any material extent, and therefore we cannot speak from first-hand experience. But I have made inquiries from housewives, and certainly there are queues, but I am told that this story that they are longer and longer every day is untrue. Certainly there are queues. One wishes there were not, but I am told by those who ought to know that it is not true that they are longer and longer. He says that the time taken by Government Departments to answer letters is longer and longer. I do not believe it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] At all events I had some very strong complaints while the hon. Gentleman was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport. People who wanted to get a licence to buy a motor car not only could not get a licence, but I am told that a great many of them never got answers to their letters; it was denied they were received. I hope to goodness that we have improved on the situation as it was at the Ministry of War Transport when he was there.
This Debate has been one of great liveliness and interest, and there have been many admirable speeches made in it. Speaking for our own side, we all


very greatly enjoyed the speech of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister today. I thought he did not leave much of the Opposition on this Motion. In fact, I am suffering a little at the moment from an inferiority complex, because I feel that there is nothing to get hold of. My right hon. and learned Friend the President of the Board of Trade made a most devastating speech yesterday and either he or the Prime Minister answered most of the questions that have been put by the Opposition. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, I am quite sure they have. Hon. Members should look at the Report. It is all in the Report. Let me add that all of us on this side, even though we strongly disagreed with the right hon. Gentleman on many matters, thoroughly enjoyed the speech of the Leader of the Opposition. We were de lighted that he was in such fine form and vigour, and we greatly enjoyed, if I may say so, the brilliant and able speech he made today. There have also been some excellent maiden speeches on both sides of the House. If I may refer to two on this side, I would first mention that of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Major Mayhew), because he is my Parliamentary Private Secretary, a noble institution in this Parliament. I thought it was an excellent contribution to the Debate, highly intelligent, as I would expect from such an able Parliamentary Private Secretary. The other was the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Captain Noel-Baker) to day, which everybody enjoyed. Indeed, I think the Debate has been, as I have said, very good.
It almost sounded from the speech of the Leader of the Opposition that the Opposition were already sorry that this Motion had been put down. There is a lot to be said for that point of view from their side. I gathered from the right hon. Gentleman's early observations that he had a sort of personal grievance against me in the matter, on the basis that I had provoked them into putting this Motion down. I admit that if I had been capable of provoking them into doing so I should certainly have done so, because it seems to me it has been admirable from the point of view of the Government that this Debate should take place. It certainly sounded as if it was that way. The

Debate and the Motion of Censure arose nominally out of the statement made on nationalisation. It is really what the Debate ought to have been about. It is referred to in the Motion, and I propose to say something about that subject. By the way in which it has worked out, and by the way in which it has been referred to by the Leader of the Opposition, it almost sounds as if the Motion of Censure really arose out of the allegation that the Opposition were not doing their job, so they thought they would put the Motion down. I am bound to say that I think it was too early to do it, much too early.
There is no particular subject upon which the Government are unpopular; there really is not. The Government are remarkably popular, as the by-elections indicate. I would not swear by a Gallup poll; I would sooner trust to my own hunch about public opinion; but, never the less, the Gallup poll has produced a rather complimentary situation as far as we are concerned. I would have thought it would have been wiser for the Opposition to wait for a bit in the hope that the Government would get into real difficulties about something, and that public opinion on that something would be cross with us, and then to dash in with a Motion of Censure and get the best advantage out of it. That seems to me to be the wiser course, but, instead of that, I make a statement, there are a few exchanges between me and the Opposition, and it sounds as if they lost their temper and banged down their Motion of Censure, and here we are, a good time being had by all.
I did make some observations on the function of an Opposition. It seems to me the constitutional function of an Opposition is to have a battle of principle between itself and the Government, to criticise the Government's policy, both on principle and in detail, and to advance an alternative policy. My complaint about the Opposition was, and remains, that they are evading the issues of principle all the time. Therefore, Parliament is not functioning in the way it should, on the basis of a real clash of principle between the two sides of the House and of alternative policies advocated by the Opposition itself. This Debate confirms that view. Who can build out of the speeches of the Opposition Front Bench any political and economic doctrine at all? Who can find


any policy in their observations? It cannot be done. All they have done is to attempt to convert the House into a hag ridden assembly, and generally, to grumble and complain about the Government. But, even on the issue of nationalisation, they have been uncertain, and they have prevaricated. There was a pamphlet published recently by the Conservative Central Office. I thought, when I got hold of it first of all— it was produced in such a way— that it was a Labour Party pamphlet. It was called.
We fight for the people.
— and here they had a definition of their functions. As a definition it is one with which 1 agree, and I would naturally invite them, with respect, to live up to the definition of their functions contained in this pamphlet. They further said— which is very much what I have said:
To be healthy, our Parliamentary. System must have a strong, vigorous and public-spirited Opposition, basing its actions on certain definite principles. The absence of such an Opposition is one of the main differences between a dictatorship and a democracy. The Conservative and Unionist Party provides Britain to-day with an Opposition meeting these requirements. It is strong; it is vigorous; it is public spirited;
and, finally,
it bases its actions on definite principles.
I have listened to this Debate, and I challenge anybody, in any part of the House—if there were time for them to answer, which there is not—to say that there have emerged from it any definite principles of political or economic policy so far as the Opposition is concerned. There was, as I have said, this black Monday. It was black for the Opposition, very black for the absentees who ought to have been there—at least three of them—and then things got cross. The right hon. Gentleman followed up with his public speech to his party to buck them up, and it was the second edition of the first Election broadcast. I described that Election broadcast as the "crazy broadcast," and this speech, with great respect, was no better. It was a speech of depression and a speech of scares. Indeed, it almost reminded one of Ansaldo — Woe, Woe, Woe. It was something like King Chanute trying to hold back the sea in a way that was really not possible, and now, that speech having been made. we pass to the Debate on this Motion.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in his speech had a good time at the expense of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health and my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. I am bound to say that in his attack on the Minister of Health I thought there was a most determined attempt to get back to, and to equate with, the attacks which my right hon. Friend used to make on the then Prime Minister—much to my regret at that time. Indeed, let me say that 1 was not exactly freed from his attacks either at that time and, therefore, I thought that the motive of the right hon. Gentleman in having his merry attack on the Minister of Health was the motive of la revanche, and I hope he enjoyed himself. Perhaps we might cry quits now, and get on with the merits of the case.
I also thought there was some good and merry fooling at the expense of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade which, he assures me, he thoroughly enjoyed, as we all did on this side. The Chancellor of the Exchequer came out of it pretty well, but, no doubt, his turn will arrive. Somebody else has summarised this political situation. Irefer to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford (Mr.Quintin Hogg). He con firms my judgment about what are the motives behind this Motion of Censure and the speech to the Conservative Party Conference. He put it very well in the "Daily Mail" on 4th December, the day before yesterday. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford wrote the following:
Mr. Churchill's brilliant indictment of the Government last Tuesday left nothing to be desired as destructive criticism. So far, so good, but where do we go from here? Is destructive criticism enough?
This is still the hon. Gentleman. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not for you."] But it is good stuff; it is all right. He continues:
Mr. Churchill firmly rejected the view of those who want the Conservative Party to adopt a more positive and constructive out look.
That is true. He continues:
Was he wise? I fear I have to differ from our brilliant leader on this point.
Later on, after discussing some other aspects of the matter, he continues:
I hope he will change his mind before it is too late, or, at least, that he will present the party with machinery which will make it


possible for the party to work out the answer for itself. The truth is that the answer, when it is given, is going to be a good deal longer than can be supplied by a single man, however brilliant.
Well, that is where they are. This is the trouble that is going on. Though this comes from the pen of the hon. Member for Oxford, who still sits on the Front Bench, at any rate for the moment, I am bound to say I congratulate him, I think it is good stuff, and I invite him to go on with the good work. I detected almost a deliberately organised split in the Front Bench, a sort of divisional function. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bromley (Mr. H.Macmillan) made some observations, including a quotation of a broadcast of the Prime Minister which I will quote again if there is time, which I thought, was calculated to be positively embarrassing. I could not make out why the right hon. Gentleman had been asked to take part in the Debate, but I know now because the hon. Member for Mon-mouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) said he identified himself in particular, not so much with the views of the Toy Party, but with the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bromley. And so it looks as if what was done was that two Members from the Left—I am bound to say some people do not know whether they are Left or Right—two from the Left and two from the Right keep the party united, and in the meantime the Member for Oxford writes for the "Daily Mail."
That seems to me to be a very fair and amicable arrangement to keep the team together; and it certainly beats the idea that when I made the statement on nationalisation, with the full authority of the Prime Minister, it was to please the rebels sitting behind me. Why, Sir, they are being as good as gold. Why should anybody try to incite them? This effort to make mischief between His Majesty's Government and its supporters is a most unpatriotic action. But the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister in his speech made one or two dangerous allusions—[HON. MEMBERS: "The Prime Minister?"]— I sat in most exciting and dangerous days with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, and it will be inevitable that now and again I shall still think of him in the terms in which I so frequently addressed him, and I beg him to forgive me. I think he was

getting into a bit of a class war mood in that speech outside, a sort of feeling that we were going towards a crash, that there was going to be a great division in society, and that there was going to be a head-on collision between what he called the Socialists and the people. Strange language this, when so many millions have voted Socialist, so many millions of all classes of society, the kind of assumption that there is a kind of clear division between the Socialists on the one hand, and the people on the other. I think this is getting a rather dangerous tendency.

Mr. Churchill: Fascist beasts, I suppose.

Mr. Morrison: I never favoured that term myself. As a matter of fact, I would not be a bit surprised if I have been labelled with that term in past years. He said:
I foresee with sorrow, but with fear, that in the next two years we shall come to fundamental quarrels in this country. It seems impossible to escape the fact that events are moving, and will move, towards the issue, the people versus the Socialists.
What does it mean? Is it a new edition of acute class war? [An HON. MEMBER:" Who taught him?"] I daresay a lot of people taught the right hon. Gentleman something about it in the past. But is it a sort of plea that this is not going to be settled by argument and reason but that there is going to be a clash about it in the end? I always thought the right hon. Gentleman was an admirer of Parliamentary institutions, and he is certainly one of the most distinguished, if not our most distinguished Parliamentarian. I do not like this idea of moving to some sort of head-on collision instead of these things being discussed on the basis of argument. However, the right hon. Gentleman was better today. If he was in the mood of class war outside, he was almost in the mood of reconciliation in his speech today.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I do not wish to interrupt because I know time is short, but I wonder if I might ask the right hon. Gentleman if he would answer one or two of the questions which have been asked.

Earl Winterton: Houses. H-O-U-S-E-S.

Mr. Morrison: Is the Noble Lord not feeling well?

Earl Winterton: I was asking how many houses?

Mr. Morrison: The hon. Gentleman has had quite a good time. There were four Opposition Front Bench speakers. I know he would like me to occupy all my time replying to him, and I would very much like to do so, but I conceive that it is desirable and important that certain general considerations should be put forward. If the Opposition think that the only function of His Majesty's Government is to persist in defending itself against questions which have been answered already, the Opposition has made a mistake. Motions of Censure are not only opportunities for attacks on the Government by the Opposition, but equally opportunities for attacks by the Government on the Opposition
I have referred to the observations which were made in this somewhat classwarry speech by the Leader of the "Opposition, and I am bound to say, surprising as it may seem, that I prefer the observations of the President of the Federation of British Industries in which he took a broader view. He recognised that there was a change of policy consequent upon the change of Government and that there were serious departures in policy. The President of the Federation of British Industries did, indeed, speak in the spirit of the statement I made on be half of His Majesty's Government, which was to recognise that there was a change of policy which has been approved by the electorate, is inherent in the nature of this policy. That being so, we must accept it as being so, and now let us get together and discuss the best way of applying that policy which the people have approved. That was what I said in the statement, and this is what the President of the Federation of British Industries now says:
We realise that industry in this, as in other countries, must operate within the frame work of Government policies and those wider international accords which we are now seeking with other Members of the United Nations. Whatever political views it may hold, industry will not be obstructive; it will not adopt go slow tactics; it will not stand on questions of form and procedure, and whilst we will not abandon our principles or pull our punches we will seek to secure a broad area of agreement on which the reconstruction of our national life can proceed.
That was the statement of a gentleman who does not agree with us and who represents very different interests, but a statement of good sense. It is the spirit in which the Government wish to carry on the discussions.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has been very anxious about war expenditure, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has commented upon the observations he has made. It really is absurd to expect a great war to finish and the war expenditure dramatically to shut down, dramatically to taper off at that point, but that seems to be what is expected. As a matter of fact a discussion like this took place at the end of the 1914– 18 war, and another discussion at the end of the Boer War, and it is a curious thing that it was the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition who made observations on both of those occasions showing why war expenditure could not suddenly stop. I will not bother the House with the one. at the end of the Boer War, but this is. What he said on 12th August, 1919, when he was Secretary of State for War, and, I gather, was meeting criticism of a precisely similar character to that which he has made against this Government this afternoon:
I am going to address myself in the very short time I will trespass further on the House to some of the more general aspects of Army and Air Force finance.
It was Army and Air Force only.
After all we are the great cause of expenditure now; we are one of the greatest causes; we are spending—400,000,000 or—500,000,000 in this year— after the war has ended— we can say the war is over, is it not? — why docs expenditure not come to an end too? — a very reasonable, and very obvious reflection to arise in the breasts of any men. The war may be over but expenditure at the present time is still governed by events; policy is only now gradually beginning to reclaim its control over expenditure. We are still and "we shall be during the whole of this present financial year in a state where our expenditure is mainly fixed not by what we decide to spend but by what happens.
That was what he said then, and he went on to say, after making reference to Servicemen stationed in France, Egypt, Palestine, India and Ireland:
I could extend this tale were it necessary, but I think I have said enough to show the House the truth of what I say in making the statement that expenditure at the present time has not yet returned within the control ling domain of policy but is still governed by brute facts and by the course of events proceeding in many parts of the world as a part of the aftermath of the great war. How ever angry people may become the fact remains that our war affairs have got to be wound up. The service of the Empire and the safety of the country have to be 'maintained and we have to pay the bill.


That speech was made by the right hon. Gentleman nine months after the end of the 1914–18 war with Germany. I am not quoting that by way of scoring points. I quote it because it is an admirable description of the facts which face my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer today. I know the right hon. Gentleman will recall the observations that he made, and that he will recognise that the principle of what he said then is not in applicable to the situation as it obtains at the present time.

Mr. Churchill: The right hon. Gentle man mentioned the figure of £ 500million as the Army and Air Force expenditure in that year. It is all a question of figures. I do not know how much we are to spend in this present financial year, but at any rate we are dealing with a block figure of £ 5,500 million.

Mr. Morrison: I do not claim that the figures are precisely analogous, either in scope or purpose, one way or the other. It is the fact that the war with Japan ended I think in August and it is now the early part of December. What I quoted concerned nine months after and it concerned the Army and the Air Force, whereas in our Bill there are all the Armed Services, the Army of Occupation, and so on, which must be costing quite a lot of money. I only make the point not because the analogy is necessarily precisely similar but because, in principle, that is the situation that faces the Government at the present time. Dealing with the economic policy which this Government is following I would point out that we have done certain things. We believed, and we made it clear at the Election that we did believe, that it would be necessary to exercise certain economic and financial controls for a substantial period of transition. We said so. When we started saying so all the signs were that that was a vote-losing proposition.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister and I, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the President of the Board of Trade, the Minister of Fuel and Power, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Health and others in the councils of the party, said "We know it may be dangerous and it may lose us votes, but we should be dishonest if we said anything else, and if we do get power we want to get it

On the basis of an honest mandate." We went through and, despite all the commotion in the Conservative Press, some of them with very big circulations — though I have a theory that political influence is often in inverse ratio to the size of the circulation— notwithstanding this vast and powerful campaign we won; and the country was undoubtedly of the opinion that economic control should go through the transition.
It is no good the right hon. Gentleman complaining about the two years in the Supplies and Services Bill being extended to five. It is his fault entirely, or the fault of his Government. If the Care taker Government had put through the Supplies and Services Bill which I, as Home Secretary, introduced in the Coalition Government,- the Bill would have gone through on the basis of two years, with power to renew, and we should not have bothered to bring in a brand new Bill and take all the trouble to amend an existing Statute. But when we came in with this mandate, and when, despite my appeals and those of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, the right hon. Gentleman and his friends refused to carry the Supplies and Services Bill through, they wiped it off the slate and the new Government were perfectly free from Coalition obligations and were free to decide what they considered necessary in the situation. There fore, let this whining about this Bill stop. I believe it is awaiting the Royal Assent; it is all right and has gone very well.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has brought in the Emergency Laws (Transitional Powers) Bill— a complementary power to retain and continue certain essential powers of direction and control. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has brought in the Bank of England Bill— an amazing experience after all the noise there has been and the stories about Socialist jiggery pokery with the Bank of England. This is an amazing country. The Bill goes through with ease and sweetness, even in a Select Committee, where all the interests were invited to appear. None did. It is going fine. Everybody is happy about it. That is good and that is necessary; it is an instrument of adequate financial control. There will be a Bill on the control of investments, because it will be necessary to see that capital expenditure is not—I will not


say, not wastefully used, but not injuriously used from the point of view of social welfare, and in order to encourage and stimulate capital expenditure in a useful, constructive and positive direction. That is coming along, and that will go through. The Building Materials and Housing Bill is going through. A Town and Country Planning (Compensation and Betterment) Bill to ensure adequate control of the land will also go through.
These Bills are not disconnected items. There is no accident about this series of Bills. These Bills were brought in as part of a deliberate and concerted plan in order that this Government should not find themselves in a position of powerlessness in a troublesome world and in relation to vested interests that might give us difficulty. We are not going to be in that situation in which we were in 1931, when we were faced with an economic blizzard, and lacking essential powers. Therefore, this policy was considered and deliberate, but our purpose is to promote order and to discourage anarchy. Ours is a constructive purpose, and that constructive purpose will go on.

Lieut.-Colonel Dower: What about housing?

Mr. Morrison: I am perfectly sure that, whatever I was talking about, the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite, who should really go and decarbonise his motor car, would certainly ask, "What about something else." He is the hon. Member for irrelevancy. [Interruption.] The gentlemanly party is not exactly a good example to my hon. Friends. We proceed to certain proposals for nationalisation, and we have a perfect right to do so. This Debate started about nationalisation and now they want to get off it. But we are going to nationalise certain industries, and if we take the series of industries with which this Government are dealing, either the case must be proved for them, or the case must be proved against them. I agree that, in the argument about nationalisation, there is the onus upon the party that is proceeding to nationalise, to prove that the nationalisation is in the public interest. I agree that the party in power proposing these things ought not to do it for political or doctrinaire considerations. But I equally say that the Opposition has no right to oppose these things on the ground that they are dogma, or doctrinaire considerations, and cer-

tainly it ought not to be done by a party led by the right hon. Gentleman, who, in his own broadcast of the so-called Four Years' Plan actually said that
a number of Measures are being prepared which will enable the Government to exercise a balancing influence upon development which can be turned on or off as circumstances may require.
It seems to me that, with regard to economic controls, there is a broad field for State ownership and enterprise, especially in regard to monopolies. The truth is that the Conservative party have a great belief in monopolies; they even believe that they have a monopoly to introduce Socialist legislation. Who was it that nationalised the telephones? It was the Conservative Party. Who was it that socialised London's water supply? The Conservative Party. Who was it that socialised the British Broadcasting system, not by Act of Parliament, but by Government licence? It was the Conservative Party, and so, too, they in part have socialised the electricity supply. When a Socialist Government come in and say, "We would like to make our modest and, we hope, adequate contribution to Socialist development," we are then faced with a Motion of Censure and are told that we have no right to do any such thing.
We are going to socialise the coalmining industry because we believe that it will be better run in that way under the Bill to be introduced by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power than it is being run, or has been run for the last many years by private enterprise. As regards gas supplies, it is a most remark able and curious coincidence that we should now be favoured with a report by gentlemen who cannot be accused of being Socialist nominees—there is only one among them, and he is a moderate trade union leader. We are going to socialise gas— not a bad idea. We are going to complete the chapter on electricity that was begun in years past and to socialise transport when the time comes.
We are going to do these things because we believe it is right to do them. We believe that it will be to the advantage of the country to do them, and I trust that, as and when those Bills and policies are submitted to the House, all of us can debate them on the merits of the case. Let us seek, by our attitude towards them, not to argue shibboleths and theoretical doctrines but to discuss them


as we ought to discuss them, on the basis of the interests of the nation.

Question put.

The House divided: Ayes, 197;Noes, 381

Division No. 47.]
AYES.
[9.16 p.m.


Agnew, Cmdr. P. G.
Gridley, Sir A.
Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.


Aitken, Hon. M.
Grimston, R. V.
Nutting, Anthony


Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir W. (Armagh)
Hannon, Sir P. (Moseley)
Orr-Ewing, I. L.


Amory, D. Heathcoat
Hare, Lt.-Col. Hon. J. H. (Woodbridge)
Osborne, C.


Anderson, Rt. Hn. Sir J. (Scot. Univ.)
Harvey, Air-Cmdre. A. V
Peake, Rt. Hon. O.


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R.
Haughton, Maj. S. G.
Peto, Brig. C. H. M.


Astor, Hon. M.
Headlam, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir C.
Pickthorn, K.


Baldwin, A. E.
Herbert, Sir A. P.
Pitman, I. J.


Barlow, Sir J.
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Ponsonby, Col. C. E.


Baxter, A. B.
Hogg, Hon. Q.
Poole, O. B. S. (Oswestry)


Beamish, Maj. T. V. H. 
Hollis, Sqn.-Ldr. M. C.
Prescott, Capt. W. R. S.


Beattie, F. (Cathcart)
Holmes, Sir J. Stanley
Price-White, Lt.-Col. D.


Bennett, Sir P.
Hope, Lord J.
Price-Palmer, Brig. O.


Birch, Lt.-Col. Nigel
Howard, Hon. A.
Raikes, H. V.


Boles, Lt.-Col. D. C. (Wells)
Hudson, Rt. Hon. R. S. (Southport)
Ramsay, Maj. S.


Boothby, R.
Hulbert, Wing-Comdr. N. J.
Rayner, Brig. R.


Bossom, A. C.
Hurd, A.
Reed, Sir S. (Aylesbury)


Bower, N.
Hutchison, Lt.-Cdr. Clark (Edin'gh, W.)
Reid, Rt. Hon. J. S. C. (Hillhead)


Boyd-Carpenter, Maj. J. A.
Hutchison, Lt.-Col. J. R. (G'gow, C.)
Renton, D.


Bracken, Rt. Hon. Brendan
Jarvis, Sir J.
Roberts, H. (Handsworth)


Braithwaite, Lt. Comdr. J. G.
Jeffreys, General Sir G.
Roberts, Maj. P. G. (Ecclesall)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W.
Jennings, R.
Robertson, Sir D. (Streatham)


Bullock, Capt. M.
Joynson-Hicks, Lt.-Cdr. Hon. L. W.
Robinson, Wing-Comdr. Roland


Butcher, H. W.
Keeling, E. H.
Ropner, Col. L.


Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (S'ffr'n W'ld'n)
Kerr, Sir J. Graham
Ross, Sir R.


Carson, E.
Kingsmill, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Sanderson, Sir F.


Challen, Flt.-Lieut. C.
Lambert, G.
Savory, Prof. D. L.


Channon, H.
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Scott, Lord W.


Churchill, Rt. Hon. W. S.
Law, Rt. Hon. R. K.
Shephard, S. (Newark)


Clarke, Col. R. S.
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Shepherd, Lt. W. S. (Bucklow)


Clifton-Brown, Lt.-Col. G.
Lindsay, Lt.-Col. M. (Solihull)
Smiles, Lt.-Col. Sir W.


Cole, T. L.
Linstead, H. N.
Smith, E. P. (Ashford)


Conant, Maj. R. J. E
Lloyd, Maj. Guy (Renfrew, E.).
Snadden, W. M.


Cooper-Key, E. M.
Lloyd, Brig. J. S. B. (Wirral)
Spearman, A. C. M.


Corbett, Lieut.-Col. U. (Ludlow)
Low, Brig. A. R. W.
Spence, Maj. H. R.


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.
Lucas, Major Sir J.
Stanley, Col. Rt. Hon. O.


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir H.
Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.


Crowder, Capt. J. F. E.
Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O.
Studholme, H. G.


Cuthbert, W. N.
MacAndrew, Col. Sir G.
Sutcliffe, H.


Darling, Sir W. Y.
McCallum, Maj. D.
Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)


Davidson, Viscountess
MacDonald, Sir M. (Inverness)
Taylor, Vice-Adm. E. A. (P'dd't'n, S.)


De la Bère, R.
Mackeson, Lt.-Col. H. R.
Teeling, Flt.-Lieut. W.


Digby, Maj. S. Wingfield
McKie, J. H. (Galloway)
Thomas, J. P. L. (Hereford)


Dodds-Parker, Col. A. D.
McKinlay, A. S.
Thomson, Sir D. (Aberdeen, S.)


Donner, Sqn.-Ldr. P. W.
Maclay, Hon. J. S.
Thorneycroft, G. E. P.


Dower, Lt.-Col. A. V. G. (Penrith)
Maclean, Brig. F. H. R. (Lancaster)
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Dower, E. L. G. (Caithness)
MacLeod, Capt. J.
Thorp, Lt.-Col. R. A. F.


Drayson, Capt. G. B.
Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold
Touche, G. C.


Drewe, C.
Macpherson, Maj. N. (Dumfries)
Turton, R. H.


Duncan, Rt. Hon. Sir A. (C. of Lond.)
Maltland, Comdr. J. W.
Vane, Lt.-Col. W. M. T.


Duthie, W. S.
Manningham-Buller, R. E.
Wakefield, Sir W. W.


Eccles, D. M.
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Walker-Smith, Lt.-Col. D.


Eden, Rt. Hon. A.
Marples, Capt. A. E.
Ward, Hon. G. R.


Erroll, Col. F. J.
Marsden, Capt. A.
Watt, Sir G. S. Harvie


Fleming, Sqn.-Ldr. E. L.
Marshall, Comdr. D. (Bodmin)
Webbe, Sir H. (Abbey)


Fletcher, W. (Bury)
Marshall, S. H. (Sutton)
Wheatley, Lt.-Col. M. J.


Foster, J. G (Northwich)
Maude, J. C.
White, Sir D. (Fareham)


Fox, Sqn.-Ldr. Sir G.
Medlicott, Brig. F.
White, Maj. J. B. (Canterbury)


Fraser, Maj. H. C. P. (Stone)
Molson, A. H. E.
Williams, C. (Torquay)


Fraser, Lt.-Col. Sir I. (Lonsdale)
Moore, Lt.-Col. Sir T.
Williams, Lt.-Cdr. G. W. (T'nbr'ge)


Gage, Lt.-Col. C.
Morrison, Maj. J. G. (Salisbury)
Willink, Rt. Hon. H U.


Galbraith, Cmdr. T. D.
Morrison, Rt. Hn. W. S. (Cirencester)
Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl


Gammans, Capt. L. D.
Mott-Radclyffe, Maj. C. E.
York, C.


Gates, Maj. E. E.
Neill, W. F. (Belfast, N.)
Young, Maj. Sir A. S. L. (Partick)


Glossop, C. W. H.
Neven-Spence, Major Sir B.



Glyn, Sir R.
Nicholson, G.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Comma-Duncan, Col. A. G. 
Nield, B. (Chester)
Mr. James Stuart and Mr Buchan-Hepburn. 




NOES.


Adams, Capt. Richard (Balham)
Allighan, Garry
Austin, H. L.


Adams, W. T. (Hammersmith, South)
Alpass, J. H.
Awbery, S. S.


Adamson, Mrs. J. L.
Anderson, A. (Motherwell)
Ayles, W. H.


Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V.
Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)
Ayrton Gould, Mrs. B.


Allen, A. C. (Bosworth)
Attewell, H. C.
Bacon, Miss A.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Attlee, Rt. Hon, C. R.
Baird, Capt. J.




Balfour, A.
Edwards, Rt. Hon. Sir C. (Bedwellty)
Lee, Miss J. (Cannock)


Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.
Edwards, John (Blackburn).
Leonard, W.


Barstow, P. G.
Edwards, N. (Caerphilly)
Leslie, J. R.


Bartlett, V.
Edwards, W. J. (Whitechapel)
Lever, Fl. Off. N. H.


Barton, C.
Evans, E. (Lowestoft)
Levy, B. W.


Battley, J. R.
Evans, S. N. (Wednesbury)
Lewis, A. W. J. (Upton)


Beattie, J. (Belfast, W.)
Ewart, R.
Lewis, J. (Bolton)


Bechervaise, A. E.
Fairhurst, F.
Lewis, T. (Southampton)


Belcher, J. W.
Farthing, W. J.
Lindgren, G. S.


Bellenger, F. J.
Fletcher, E. G. M. (Islington, E.)
Lindsay, K. M. (Comb'd Eng. Univ.)


Benson, G.
Follick, M.
Lipson, D. L.


Beswick, Flt-Lieut. F.
Foot, M. M.
Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.


Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)
Forman, J. C.
Logan, D. G.


Bevin, Rt. Hon. E. (Wandsworth, C.)
Foster, W. (Wigan)
Longden, F.


Binns, J.
Fraser, T. (Hamilton)
Lyne, A. W.


Blackburn, Capt. A. R.
Freeman, Maj. J. (Watford)
McAdam, W.


Blenkinsop, Capt. A.
Freeman, Peter (Newport)
McAllister, G.


Blyton, W. R.
Gaitskell, H. T. N.
McEntee, V. La T.


Boardman, H.
Gallacher, W.
McGhee, H. G.


Bottomley, A. G.
Ganley, Mrs. C. S.
Mack, J. D.


Bowden, Flg.-Offr. H. W.
George, Lady M. Lloyd (Anglesey)
McKay, J. (Wallsend)


Bowen, R.
Gibbins, J.
Mackay, R. W. G. (Hull, N.W.)


Bowles, F. G. (Nuneaton)
Gibson, C. W.
McKinlay, A. S.


Braddock, Mrs. E. M. (L'p'l, Exch'ge)
 Gilzean, A.
Maclean, N. (Govan)


Braddock, T. (Mitcham)
Gooch, E. G.
McLeavy, F.


Brook, D. (Halifax)
Goodrich, H. E.
MacMillan, M. K.


Brooks, T. J. (Rothwell)
Gordon-Walker, P. C.
McNeil, H.


Brown, George (Belper)
Granville, E. (Eye)
Macpherson, T. (Romford)


Brown, T. J. (Ince)
Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.
Mainwaring, W. H.


Brown, W. J. (Rugby)
Grenfell, D. R.
Mallalieu, J. P W.


Bruce, Maj. D. W. T.
Grey, C. F.
Mann, Mrs. J.


Buchanan, G.
Grierson, E.
Manning, C. (Camberwell, N.)


Burden, T. W.
Griffiths, D. (Rother Valley)
Manning, Mrs. L. (Epping)


Burke, W. A.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. J. (Llanelly)
Marquand, H. A.


Butler, H. W. (Hackney, S.)
Griffiths, Capt. W. O. (Moss Side)
Maxton, J.


Byers, Lt.-Col. F.
Guest, Dr. L. Haden
Mayhew, Maj. C. P.


Callaghan, James.
Gunter, Capt. R. J.
Medland, H. M.


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Guy, W. H.
Messer, F.


Chamberlain, R. A.
Haire, Flt.-Lieut. J. (Wycombe)
Middleton, Mrs. L.


Champion, A. J.
Hall, Rt. Hon. G. H. (Aberdare)
Mikardo, Ian


Chater, D.
Hall, W. G. (Colne Valley)
Mitchison, Maj. G. R.


Chetwynd, Capt. G. R.
Hamilton, Lieut.-Col. R.
Monslow, W.


Clitherow, R.
Hannan, W. (Maryhill)
Montague, F.


Cluse, W. S.
Hardman, D. R.
Moody, A. S.


Cobb, F. A.
Hardy, E. A.
Morgan, Dr. H. B.


Cocks, F. S.
Hastings, Dr. Somerville
Morley, R.


Coldrick, W.
Haworth, J.
Morris, Lt.-Col. H. (Sheffield, C.)


Collick, P.
Henderson, A. (Kingswinford)
Morris, P. (Swansea, W.)


Collindridge, F.
Henderson, J. (Ardwick)
Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Lewisham, E.)


Collins, V. J.
Herbison, Miss M.
Mort, D. L.


Colman, Miss G. M.
Hewitson, Captain M.
Moyle, A.


Cook, T. F.
Hicks, G.
Murray, J. D.


Cooper, Wing-Comdr. G.
Hobson, C. R.
Nally, W.


Corbet, Mrs. F. K. (Camb'well, N.W.)
Holman, P.
Naylor, T. E.


Corlett, Dr. J.
Horabin, T. L.
Neal, H. (Claycross)


Corvedale, Viscount
House, G.
Nichol, Mrs. M. E. (Bradford, N.)


Cove, W. G.
Hoy, J.
Nicholls, H. R. (Stratford)


Crawley, Flt.-Lieut. A
Hubbard, T.
Noel-Baker, Capt. F. E. (Brentford)


Cripps, Rt. Hon. Sir S.
Hudson, J. H. (Ealing, W.)
Noel-Buxton, Lady


Crossman, R. H. S.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
O'Brien, T.


Cunningham, P.
Hughes, Lt. H. D. (W'lhampton, W.)
Oldfield, W. H.


Daggar, G.
Hynd, H. (Hackney, C.)
Oliver, G. H.


Daines, P.
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Orbach, M.


Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.
Paget, R. T.


Davies, Edward (Burslem)
Janner, B.
Paling, Rt. Hon. Wilfred (Wentworth)


Davies, Clement (Montgomery)
Jeger, Capt. G. (Winchester)
Palmer, A. M. F.


Davies, Ernest (Enfield)
Jeger, Dr. S. W. (St. Pancras, S.E.)
Pargiter, G. A.


Davies, Harold (Leek)
John, W.
Parker, J.


Davies, Haydn (St. Pancras, S.W.)
Jones, A. C. (Shipley)
Parkin, Flt.-Lieut. B. T.


Davies, R. J. (Westhoughton)
Jones, D. T. (Hartlepools)
Paton, Mrs. F. (Rushcliffe)


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Jones, J. H. (Bolton)
Paton, J. (Norwich)


Deer, G.
Jones, Maj. P. Asterley (Hitchin)
Pearson, A.


de Freitas, Geoffrey
Keenan, W.
Peart, Capt. T. F.


Delargy, Captain H. J.
Kendall, W. D.
Perrins, W.


Diamond, J.
Kenyon, C.
Piratin, P.


Dobbie, W.
Key, C. W.
Platts-Mills, J. F. F.


Dodds, N. N.
King, E. M.
Poole, Major Cecil (Lichfield)


Douglas, F. C. R.
Kinghorn, Sqn.-Ldr. E.
Popplewell, E.


Duberg, T. E. N.
Kinley, J.
Porter, E. (Warrington)


Dugdale J. (W. Bromwich)
Kirby, B. V.
Porter, G. (Leeds)


Dumpleton, C. W.
Kirkwood, D.
Pritt, D. N.


Durbin, E. F. M
Lang, G.
Proctor, W. T.


Dye, S.
Lavers, S.
Pryde, D. J.


Ede, Rt Hon. J. C.
Lawson, Rt. Hon. J. J.
Pursey, Cmdr. H.


Edelman, M.
Lee, F. (Hulme)
Randall, H. E.




Ranger, J.
Sorensen, R. W. 
Warbey, W. N.


Rankin, J
Soskice, Maj. Sir F.
Watkins, T. E.


Rees-Williams, Lt.-Col. D. R.
Sparks, J. A.
Watson, W. M.


Reeves, J.
Stamford, W.
Webb, M. (Bradford, C.)


Reid, T. (Swindon)
Steele, T.
Weitzman, D.


Rhodes, H.
Stephen, C.
Wells, P. L. (Faversham)


Richards, R.
Stewart, Capt. Michael (Fulham, E.)
Wells, Maj. W. T. (Walsall)


Ridealgh, Mrs. M.
Stokes, R. R.
White, C. F. (Derbyshire, W.)


Robens, A.
Strachey, J.
White, H. (Derbyshire, N.E.)


Roberts, Sqn.-Ldr. E. O. (Merioneth)
Strauss, G. R.
Wigg, Col- G. E. C.


Roberts, G. O. (Caernarvonshire)
Stross, Dr. B.
Wilcock, Group-Capt. C. A. B.


Roberts, W. (Cumberland, N.)
Stubbs, A. E.
Wilkes, Maj. L.


Robertson, J. J. (Berwick)
Summerskill, Dr. Edith
Wilkins, W. A.


Rogers, G. H. R.
Swingler, Capt. S. 
Wilkinson, Rt. Hon. Ellen


Royle, C.
Symonds, Maj. A. L.
Willey, F. T. (Sunderland)


Sargood, R.
Taylor, H. B. (Mansfield)
Willey, O. G. (Cleveland)


Scott-Elliot, W.
Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)
Williams, D. J. (Neath)


Segal, Sq. Ldr. S.
Taylor, Dr. S. (Barnet)
Williams, Rt. Hon. E. J. (Ogmore)


Sharp, Lt.-Col. G. M.
Thomas, I. O. (Wrekin)
Williams, J. L. (Kelvingrove)


Shawcross, C. N. (Widnes)
Thomas, George (Cardiff)
Williams, Rt. Hon. T. (Don Valley)


Shawcross, Sir H. (St. Helens)
Thomson, Rt. Hon. G. R. (E'b'gh, E.)
Williams, W. R. (Heston)


Shinwell. Rt. Hon. E.
Thorneycroft, H.
Williamson, T.


Shurmer P.
Thurtle, E.
Willis, E.


Silkin, Rt. Hon. L.
Tiffany, S.
Wills, Mrs. E. A.


Silverman, J. (Erdington)
Timmins, J.
Wilmot, Rt. Hon. J.


Simmons, C. J.
Tolley, L.
Wilson, J. H.


Skeffington, A. M.
Tomlinson, Rt. Hon. G.
Wise, Major F. J.


Skeffington-Lodge, Lt. T. C.
Turner-Samuels, M.
Woodburn, A.


Skinnard, F. W.
Ungoed-Thomas, L.
Woods, G. S.


Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir B. (Rotherhithe)
Usborne, Henry
Wyatt, Maj. W.


Smith, Capt. C. (Colchester)
Vernon, Maj. W. F.
Yates, V. F.


Smith, Ellis (Stoke)
Viant, S. P.
Young, Sir R. (Newton)


Smith, H. N. (Nottingham, S.)
Wadsworlh, G.
Younger, Maj. Hon. K. G.


Smith, S. H. (Hull, S.W.)
Walkden, E.
Zilliacus, K.


Smith, T. (Normanton)
Walker, G. H.



Snow, Capt. J. W.
Wallace, G. D. (Chislehurst)
TELLER FOR THE NOES:


Solley, L. J.
Wallace, H. W. (Walthamstow, E.)
Mr. whiteley and mr.mathers.


Question put, and agreed to.

INDIA (ELECTIONS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."[Mr. H. Morrison.]

9.28 p.m.

Major Wyatt: The subject I am raising is one that is very far remote from the discussion of the last two days. I think that it is not unimportant, in view of the Government's recent statement on India, that we should, for a moment in this House, consider the conditions under which the forthcoming elections in India will be held, because out of this election should come the constitution-making body which will settle the whole future of India once and for all. These elections may be the last elections—I hope they will be—ever held in India under British jurisdiction, and it is most important for the future relations between this country and India that Indians should, at this time, have good faith, or have reliance on the good faith of the attitude of the Government. Already, in India, things have been said which show that some of the Indian leaders feel that this Labour Government in no way differs from a Conservative Government, which is rather in contrast to what the hon.

Gentlemen opposite have been saying during the last two days.
The holding of this election gives us a chance to show complete impartiality and tolerance in our attitude towards the problem of India. First there are still detained in India several thousands of political detenus. I think it is time we had some clear definitive statement about what is to be done with these political detenus. We should either release them or try them, because it is against the traditions of this country to detain people in prison indefinitely without trial. I could appreciate that many of these detenus could be classified by the authorities as being terrorists. If the authorities have reasonable grounds to suppose that some of them are terrorists, in that case, they should either try them now or, if they think them too dangerous to let them out now, announce a date after the election on which they will be tried. The important thing is to remove uncertainty. If is within the power of the Secretary of State to instruct the Governors of the Provinces to take this action. It may be said that, in the Provinces where Section 93 of the Government of India Act is not operating, the Governors should not do that without consultation with the Provincial Governments concerned, but, as the prisoners were put in without con-


Sultation with the Provincial Governments, they can surely be put out without consultation with the Provincial Governments? While out of detention, the ex-political detenus, or people convicted of political offences, suffer from some further disabilities, which should be removed. They have been removed in some cases, according to the disposition of the particular Provincial Government concerned.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell us how many political detenus he is referring to?

Major Wyatt: I am referring to the last figure given by my hon. and learned Friend, which was something in the neighbourhood of 3,000 or 4,000. I am hoping that he will give us the latest figures, because I know these releases are taking place the whole time, and I want a clear and definite statement to resolve the whole question. In Madras, I under stand, instructions have been given that the names of ex-political detenus should be removed from the voters' list if they have not got, in the current year, the necessary120 days' residential qualification. Naturally, if held in prison against their will during the present year, they have not got the necessary qualification, so I think that that disability should be removed, as it has been removed in other Provinces. It is within the power of the Governors to take this action. Of course, at the same time, if they are not on the voters' list, they cannot become candidates and both these disabilities should be removed.
I think also that all Governors should be instructed to use the discretion that they are allowed in Section 69 (b) of the Government of India Act to allow people who have been convicted of any offences and served a term of imprisonment of two years, and five years has not yet run since the end of their imprisonment, to stand as candidates, because this rule—if the discretion is not used—means that many people who went to prison for political offences, particularly at the time of the August, 1942, disturbances, are debarred from being candidates although, according to their lights, they have not committed any crime which would justify their going to prison—they have only been trying to make an attempt to achieve the liberty of their country. We may have views on whether

they are taking the right action or not but, nevertheless, we must admit that there is some substance in their argument. So I think that all governors should be instructed to use their discretion. I know that many have, but there may be some cases which have been left over.
The next point I want to deal with is the soldier's vote. We had a statement not long ago which seemed to indicate that Indian soldiers in the Indian Army would be able to vote. I do not think many people appreciate that an Indian soldier can vote only if he happens, in the first place, to be stationed in India at the time, in which case he may have to take a train journey as far as from London to Moscow in order to record his vote. I agree that the Government of India have, very rightly, given him three days' leave in order to undertake this task, and then he comes back again, but there are no arrangements, as there were in the United Kingdom, for Indian soldiers to vote by post or by proxy, and I think there should be. If it can be done in England, it can be done in India. At the moment, of course, an Indian soldier can vote only if he has either the educational qualification or the property qualification. He cannot vote merely because he is a soldier. Only retired Indian soldiers are allowed to vote by virtue of having been a soldier, and 1 think that in this particular case of Indian soldiers— where the administration of the Army allows you to record people's names and identities, and so forth, pretty accurately—the franchise should be extended to include all Indian soldiers, because 1 think that they—and I am sure the hon. Members opposite will agree—have played their part in this war and that they should be entitled to have some voice in the future constitution of their country. This again can be done, I think quite simply, by using the powers given to the provincial Governments under Section 291(b) of the Government of India Act.
There have been general complaints from India about omissions in the electoral rolls, and that in some cases very old registers will be used. I believe in some areas that they are dated 1941 and even earlier. I know that it was not possible, with the limited Civil Service in India, to undertake any very great extension of the franchise, but I do think it is possible to take every possible pains to see that those registers are up to date and complete, so that Indians have confidence


in the administration having made all possible efforts to bring them up to date, even though they may not be as extensive as they might have wished. I do not think there should be any hesitation to rectify any incomplete registers; there should be quite a lot of latitude given in that respect.
Now I turn to a rather more important point, and that is the actual conduct of the elections themselves. The Prime Minister, in his broadcast statement soon after he took office, said that the elections in India must be free and fair. I think it is a very high tribute to Government officials in India, both British and Indian, that there is no general complaint in India, as to their impartiality or lack of impartiality. Every one appreciates that they have a very difficult job.. They are understaffed and overworked, and Indians themselves have very frequently said to me how much they respect the integrity of the Government of India officials, particularly for instance where it comes to using their judgment in maintaining neutrality between contending parties.
That is why reports of Government officials taking sides in the Punjab election have some considerable importance. My hon. and learned Friend, I know, has seen some of these reports, and I think that his Noble Friend is also aware that there have been reports of this kind coming out of the Punjab. In the Punjab, the Government is a Unionist Government. That Unionist party have been very pro-British, and very friendly with the British, and I think they, probably more than any other party in India, would prefer that Indian nationalism was never achieved. It may be more convenient for the British Administration or Government administration in the Punjab to see that the Unionist party is again returned at the election in the Punjab, because, owing to the allotment of the various community seats, if the Unionist party is not returned with a reasonable majority, it will follow that there will be a certain amount of in stability in the government of that province. Last April I was told—

Earl Winterton: On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. As I understand, the hon. and gallant Gentle man is now talking about the Punjab, which is under its own Provincial Government. I submit that under the Govern-

ment of India Act, it is not open for us in this House to criticise the doings of a Provincial Government.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hubert Beaumont: I think it would be wiser if the hon. and gallant Member refrained from dealing any further with the matter.

Mr. Driberg: Is it in Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to discuss the Government of Burma and the affairs of Burma, which would be almost a parallel case?

Earl Winterton: There have been several Rulings, I submit, in which it has been laid down again and again by Mr. Speaker that, under the Government of India Act, it is not possible to criticise the doings of a Provincial Government. There were certain Governments taken over by the Central Government, but, as the hon. Gentleman said, that does not apply to the Punjab which is in the same position, I submit, broadly, as the Dominions.

Major Wyatt: Would I be in Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if I confined my remarks to the Government of India officials employed in the Punjab Province?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member is getting away from the point he has developed.

Mr. Paton: On this Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, one, of course, understands its application to the Provincial Government so far as they exercise their power of government but, as we all know in this House, there are sections of the affairs of the Provincial Government which are also affairs of the Central Government of India. Can we not discuss these?

Mr. Nicholson: May I suggest that the Central Government of India has no influence at all on the provincial elections, or the conduct of them?

Major Wyatt: The Secretary of State has full power to issue any general or particular directions to the Governor-General, and under the Government of India Amendment Act, 1939, the Governor-General has full power to pass those on to the Governor of the Province.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Will the Under Secretary of State for India please state the position?

The Under-Secretory of State for India (Mr. Arthur Henderson): It is rather a difficult question as to when we are going over the line, but it is a fact that the rules that are made under the Sixth Schedule are the responsibility of the Governor of the Province, because it is entirely within his discretion, but I am bound to say that the Secretary of State for India has some responsibility over the exercise of the discretion by the Governor, whereas it would be quite improper to criticise the conduct of the machinery by the officials of the Punjab Government in so far as any question is raised as to the elections rules that have been authorised by the Government. It may well be that it is within the province of the Secretary of State for India to take action, if he were of opinion that the Governor of the Punjab was not exercising his discretion in accordance with the 1935 Act.

Earl Wintcrton: May I point out that this question is one which is regarded with particular jealousy in India [An HON. MEMBER: "By whom?"] By the Indians. Previous Rulings by the Chair have been that matters which appertain to Provincial Government cannot be discussed in this House.

Mr. Henderson: I did take advice in the Department in this matter. Perhaps I might read it for the 'benefit of the House:
As regards the propriety of dealing with electoral matters in the House, the question is one not of law but of policy. The law is quite clear. The Secretary of State has a right to intervene in a double sense as the rules themselves are made by the Governor in his individual judgment and the particular Rule involved, affecting the dates of the elections is made by the Governor in his discretion under paragraph 20 of Part I of the Assemblies Order. The intervals in the successive stages in the elections may, however, be fixed by the Governor.
According to this ruling it would appear to be possible to raise any point which is in reference to election rules, but nothing beyond that.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I do not think I can improve on the statement just made. I would ask the hon. and gallant Member to proceed with caution and care.

Major Wyatt: I will try to proceed with the caution and care with which I was dealing with this subject. It is one in which the greatest possible tact must be exercised, not only as regards any minor repercussions in this country, but as

regards the repercussions in India. I would merely indicate, in deference to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that there has been a certain amount of uneasiness in the Punjab. I would like to suggest to the Government that fairly simple action could be taken to deal with this problem which would put the ballot beyond all possible dispute. In this Province the system for election at present in use is different from that used in the other Provinces. In this case the official sits behind his table in the voting booth, and has a representative of each party standing behind him. The illiterate voter comes into the polling booth, and the official points at the names of the candidates on the paper in front of him. The official sees for whom the illiterate voter votes. That may or may not be a good thing. In other Provinces the system of the coloured ballot box is used. By this system the official and the representatives of the parties are sitting in front of a screen. The illiterate voter comes in, the representative of the party tells the illiterate voter which their colour is, he is given a voting slip, he goes behind the screen and no one sees which coloured voting box he puts his slip into, which I think is a far better arrangement.
It might be as well to have from other Provinces in these provincial elections, some other officials so that there would be no uneasiness in the minds of the Indians in that province. I particularly emphasise the point of the elections in the Punjab, because of all the provincial elections taking place in India in the next few months, with the possible exception of Bengal, these will be the most important. It is in the Punjab that the issue of whether or not the Moslem League can press their claim to Pakistan is to be decided. If the Moslem League can obtain the greater majority of the Moslem seats, they have got a clear case to go forward in India for saying "We have the support of the majority of Moslems." If they do not, it will be another matter. Their case for Pakistan will not be so strong. It is in that Province that we will have the issue of whether there are to be one or two India's. I am leaving out the Indian States. It is above all important that there should be no possible suspicion that these elections in the Punjab are not free.
I think that if some such arrangements were made, or suggested, by His


Majesty's Government, we could have reasonable satisfaction on the Indian side. I intended to raise one other small point, about official action elsewhere in India which might be frowned upon, but I will not do so in deference to the Noble Lord. I was only going to raise it, to illustrate how impartially the Government officials were conducting the elections as a whole throughout India. I know that my hon. Friend and his Noble Friend are perfectly sincere in their intentions towards India. They mean to see that India shall get her independence. I am a little afraid that there is not as much trust as there might be on the Indian side of both my hon. Friend and his Noble Friend. If he takes some action in this particular matter and shows that he and Parliament are constantly vigilant about the affairs of India— even though, in some ways, they may seem rather small— then he will be doing much to improve our relations with India and to build sure foundations for the negotiations that will come after the elections

9.53 p.m.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: I am sure the whole House will recognise the reasonable and moderate tone of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken, but I wonder if he is not exaggerating the possibility of this abuse occurring in the Punjab and exaggerating its importance. The central elections have already taken place and they are quite as important as the provincial elections, as far as the Punjab is concerned. The Punjab, as the House knows, is a Province of an exceedingly heterogeneous nature; it is not homogeneous in any sense of the word. The conflict between the Moslem League and the Unionist Party can hardly take the shape of an attempt by the one or the other to tyrannise over a minority— although it will disagree with it— as might occur in a totalitarian State. More than 40 percent. of the inhabitants of the Punjab are Hindus or Sikhs, and I have always felt that the danger in elections is not in the province where there is some division of political opinion, but in the Province where one party has an absolutely over whelming preponderance. That is where there is the danger of elections being rigged and intimidation occurring

Major Wyatt: May I interrupt? Would the hon. Member not agree that in a Province where you have a Provincial party government in operation, they have control of the people right down as far as the irrigation officer— who is so important in the Punjab, as the hon. Member would know, because of his own experience in India— and there is a lot that can be done to rig an election?

Mr. Nicholson: I adhere to my view. I do not think the Punjab Government is one where every subordinate officer holds political opinions which are the same as those of the Government of the day. The Moslem League can hold its own just as the Unionist Party can. My opinion is that democracy has worked as well in the Punjab as anywhere else. I have followed events in India and I have not come across any serious feeling from what I have read and from the letters I have had from India, that the election would be more corrupt there than in any Eastern country.

Major Wyatt: In view of what the hon. Member has just said, I would like to make it absolutely clear that my only concern in raising this matter is that the official machinery supervising the election should be absolutely above and beyond suspicion, whatever people directly concerned in the election may or may not do.

Mr. Nicholson: There would have been something in that view, if the hon. Member had been able to raise this matter a good many months ago. The thing is now under way. Central elections have already taken place, and the provincial elections begin within the next five weeks in one Indian Province, and are spread over the next few months, I think. It would look bad if the Secretary of State for India started to elaborate machinery of a direct and overriding interference. After all, the only justification for the Secretary of State to interfere is the conviction that there is substantial evidence that corruption is likely to take place, and I think the more we leave India and, above all, Indian Provincial Governments, which are in good working order, to run elections themselves, the better. You cannot profess to give freedom to a nation—India or anywhere else—while always interfering in a grandmotherly fashion because one


thinks things may go wrong. When you have given provincial self-government you must keep clear of interference in government of that kind. That is not only a constitutional doctrine but sound common sense. I would ask the hon. and gallant Member to bear in mind that whatever we do in this country in the way of interference in Indian affairs is bound to be misinterpreted, and bound to cause suspicion and this would be a purely gratuitous interference. I hope the hon. and gallant Member does not think I am quarrelling with him needlessly, but I am very certain that for the Government to carry out his suggestion would not be a desirable proceeding.

10.0 p.m.

Earl Winterton: I am sure that the hon. and gallant Member who initiated this Debate had the best intentions, and personally I think many of his suggestions were valuable, but for the reasons that I put on the points of Order which I raised I feel that we are on very delicate ground because of the constitutional position. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. G. Nicholson) that there is always a danger that even the best intentioned speeches of any hon. Members on the other side of the House in regard to the internal organisation of India may be interpreted in India as an attempt by this House to interfere with India. We are in a rather strange position today, because it is no longer the case that the Indian extremist leaders—if I may so describe them—or leaders, distinguish between Codlin and Short. On the contrary Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said the other day—I have not his ipsissima verba but this was the effect of it—that in sheer distrust of India and in bad policy for India there was nothing to distinguish between the Tories and the Socialists. That observation will no doubt make hon. Members opposite careful to say nothing which could further exacerbate his feelings. I rise for a different purpose, and I seldom speak in an Indian Debate and do not want to stand between the House and other hon. Members.
I think the hon. Member must have observed the other day that it was not any party feeling but a much more general feeling of disquietude which was expressed in the House when it was announced that it was the intention of His Majesty's

Government to send to India a Com mission or a Committee or whatever it was called appointed by the Empire Parliamentary Association. Nobody would suggest that the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leamington (Mr. Eden) usually have much in common from a political point of view, and we may be sure that when they rose one after the other to cast grave doubts on the value of that suggestion it represents something more than a party view.
It may seem strange coming from my lips, but I will tell the Under-Secretary why I think the proposal was a somewhat calamitous one. I have always been a great supporter of the Empire, but the majority of men in public life in India are not supporters of the Empire. Why, therefore, choose an association known as the Empire Parliamentary Association to select a number of hon. Gentlemen for duties which are very ill-defined and—while I do not want to make wounding and ridiculous observations which would quite properly be objected to—who might, I think, easily turn themselves into "Paget M.Ps.", having no clear definition laid down as to their duties? That was a defect. If we are to send Members of this House, the first Assembly in the world, the greatest legislative Assembly in the world, to any part of the Empire, they must go with a clear mission and purpose, and I maintain that they should go under the auspices of this House. This House should take the responsibility. I do not ask for an answer to-night, but I do ask the Under-Secretary to have regard to the strong expressions of doubt which was forthcoming on that occasion, and not to persist in this matter without consultations through the usual channels and also with other Members of the House as well.

10.5 p.m.

Mr. Driberg: I would like to support very strongly what the Noble Lord has just said with regard to the mission to India. I personally think that the delegation should be an all party one, and should be an official Parliamentary delegation with clear terms of reference, rather like the delegation on which I had the honour to serve, which went to Buchenwald at short notice in April last. It went with very clear terms of reference and was instructed to draw up a report


which was presented to the Prime Minister and the Government on our return, and was later published as a White Paper. It is essential that, whatever delegation does go, it should be able and should be required on its return to make to this House or to the Government a report for publication as a White Paper, or in some other way to issue its findings on what the members of the delegation saw and heard in India.
One of the most frustrating things which, I think, was not mentioned when the announcement was made the other day about the mission that went to New found land was that, as many Members of the last Parliament will remember, there was endless trouble in this House because the members of that mission to Newfound land were not allowed to make public their report on what they found there. As it turned out, one of them did publish his own report, to which I think the other members of the mission rather took exception, and it was not altogether a satisfactory arrangement. That report on Newfoundland should have been made available and published. Similarly, this mission which is to go to India, should publish its findings when it returns.
Having said that, there is only one other point to which I would like to refer, and that is in support of my hon. and gallant Friend in a particular part of his speech which I think was entirely non-controversial. I refer to his plea that the Indian soldiers should be given as much opportunity as possible to record their votes. I was in Rangoon a month or two ago, and after attending a meeting there a couple of Indian soldiers came up to me and spoke about this very point. They said how deeply they felt it that they should have been able to fight in the war side by side with soldiers from the United Kingdom, and yet, whereas the soldiers from the United Kingdom were able to record their votes by proxy or by post, they themselves were apparently going to be done out of the right of exercising their franchise. I hope my hon. and learned Friend will tell us that he is going to try to make some sort of arrangements, or will see that arrangements are made, for Indian soldiers to vote by proxy or by post if they cannot be at their own homes to do so. Those hon. Members who saw that admirable film "Burma victory" a few weeks ago

in the Grand Committee Room will re member seeing how many Indian soldiers there were, and everybody knows how gallantly they fought in Burma, as they have fought on other fronts during the war. The least we can do for them, so far as we can do anything about it in this House, is to urge that they should be allowed to record their votes.

10.9 p.m.

Mr. Peter Freeman: I rise only to ask the Under-Secretary one question before he replies. At the same time I would like to associate myself with the proposal that has been made that this delegation or mission should go from this House, because it seems to me that it will go with more dignity and responsibility. The question I want to ask the Under-Secretary is whether he will state the qualifications of the electors who will vote in this election. Of course, it varies in the different States, but in these democratic days we are apt to think that every body in India will have a vote. Every body over 21 in this country and in most other countries has a vote at the elections, but that is not the case in India. If the hon. and learned Gentleman could give a statement of individual cases or any special cases, it would be of guidance, and perhaps at the same time he could state the proportion of the population who are entitled to take part in the vote, and those of adult age. The number of voters is of interest to those of us who know that it is impossible to get a democratic vote, in India.

10.11 p.m.

Sir Stanley Reed: There are only two points that I would like to raise and I do not raise them in any vein of criticism, but in order to put another aspect of the problem. If I understand the hon. and gallant Member for Aston (Major Wyatt) correctly, his argument was that those detenus who were detained for anarchical crime should either be tried or released. I do not think that he was in the House during the last Parliament, but if he looks back at the records, he will see that that point was raised in regard to Regulation 18B. The Home Secretary of his own particular shade of opinion emphatically declared in this House that he would not, and could not, accept responsibility in that matter. Against the strong pressure of some of my own political friends, I have always set


my face against the idea that one could bring this sort of offence to trial in open court.
I would like to give an illustration of how that worked. On an earlier occasion, when certain persons were detained for complicity in anarchical crimes, the Government deputed an Indian judge of the highest repute, who had served his period in the High Court, and who was a strong Nationalist, to inquire into each case and make a personal investigation. He assured me afterwards that in 18 out of 19 cases there was not the remotest chance of bringing them before the ordinary procedure of a court of justice. In the 19th case there was a suspicion or shadow of doubt. I mention that as an illustration of the impossibility of people charged with anarchical crime in India being brought to trial. Substantial numbers have been released even though the detenus were engaged in anarchical crime. In this House, Home Secretaries, what ever their political opinions, found it impossible to carry on their responsibility without having the power under i8b in their full discretion.
The only other point I would mention is that my hon. and gallant Friend said, with great force, that the elections which are soon to take place in the Punjab are crucial elections and, therefore, should be above suspicion. I sincerely hope that my hon. and learned Friend will consider many times before he applies a corrective to the Government of the Punjab. The one certainty of creating such an atmosphere would be to issue the corrective suggested. I hope that the Minister will make it clear that there is no reason what ever to suspect any interference with the free exercise of the franchise, and that he will not of his own volition cause any suspicion. Everybody, I need hardly add, will cordially agree with what has been said about the Burmese soldiers.

The Under-Secretary of State for India (Mr. Arthur Henderson): A variety of points have been raised in the Debate and I will endeavour, in the limited time at my disposal, to try to cover all of them. Perhaps I might start with the point raised by the Noble Lord with regard to the proposed Parliamentary delegation under the auspices of the Empire Parliamentary Association. I am sure that he does not expect me to state the policy of the Government on that matter tonight—

certainly I am not in a position to do so—but I will convey to my noble Friend the view that he has expressed.

Earl Winterton: It is a view which is supported strongly by two hon. Gentle men opposite.

Mr. Henderson: Oh, yes. Their support, as expressed, will appear in the Official Report, and will be on record. My hon. and gallant Friend who opened the Debate raised a number of points. The first referred to the political detenus and he urged that they should either be re leased or that a date should be fixed for their trial. The policy of the Government with regard to political detenus has already been announced in a detailed reply that I made in the House on 15th October. Hon. Members will remember that it was then stated that the policy of the Government of India was one of progressive release, based upon a careful examination of each case. The number of detenus on 1st August was 1,958, and on 1st October, 1,109. By 1st December the number had been further reduced to 622. I think that those figures indicate that the Government are carrying out the policy which I announced on 15th October. If it were thought necessary, I should like to assure the House that the policy of progressive release will be continued at as rapid a pace as conditions in India will permit.
My hon. and gallant Friend passed from the release of detenus to what he called the disabilities which had been imposed upon detenus, and he referred to the fact that those who had been imprisoned for periods of two years should not be disqualified from taking part in the elections. The Government of India have followed a liberal policy in regard to both the Central and the Provincial Legislatures, and disqualifications resulting from convictions arising out of political offences are being removed on application in all cases where the offence has not involved violence or disqualification on account of corrupt practices at elections. No information is available, at the moment, about the number of instances in which disqualification has been re moved in the case of the Provincial Legislatures, but in the case of the Central Legislature all applications for the removal of disqualification have been allowed, with the exception of one, where


the disqualification was on account of corrupt practices.
My hon. and gallant Friend then referred to the position in Madras where, he stated, residence in jail appeared to have been held as a disqualification in connection with the residential qualification. The position with regard to Madras is that the residential qualification, as laid down for Madras in the Sixth Schedule of the 1935 Act, is that a person must have resided in a house in the constituency for a period of not less than 120 days in the previous financial year. The Madras Government have received legal advice that a person confined in a jail within the constituency for more than 245 days in the previous financial year cannot be said to have fulfilled the residential qualification as he has not resided in a house in the constituency. There is, however, some doubt as to whether this legal advice is correct and further inquiries are being made. Meanwhile, arrangements have been made for the last day for the filing of claims for inclusion in the electoral rolls to be deferred from 4th December to 19th December, which will enable persons affected by the previous decision to be included in the electoral rolls if this is found to be permissible.
My hon. and gallant Friend then dealt with the question of voting by soldiers, and asked what steps were being taken to arrange for soldiers to cast their votes. It is quite true that the only arrangements that have been made apply to soldiers who are at present stationed within the boundaries of India. My hon. and gallant Friend suggested that arrangements should be made for postal voting or voting by proxy. The possibility of providing facilities for postal voting and voting by proxy by members of the Indian Forces have been carefully considered by the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief, and both have come to the conclusion that the administrative difficulties of arranging any such systems in India would be so great as to be quite impossible for the purpose of the present elections. Their view is that the administrative difficulties are such that, on the one hand, the civil authority in the constituencies would not be able to pre pare from the electoral rolls an accurate list of persons who are absent in the defence Services; they have not, for example, the necessary information about

units, stations, etc., while on the other hand commanding officers do not know which members of their units are qualified and registered as voters.
As regards the question of allowing all soldiers to vote, those for example who are within the boundaries of India, my hon. and gallant Friend suggested that we might take action under Section 291 of the 1935 Act. The suggestion that the vote should be given to all soldiers is one that obvbiously makes a natural appeal to us all in view of the great services of the Indian Army in this war. The suggestion that my hon. and gallant Friend has made, however, raises complicated problems in regard to other classes of war workers which could not be easily re solved. In any event we have been advised by our legal advisers that Section 291 of the 1935 Act would not enable soldiers as such to be added to the list of persons qualified to vote, and that action could only be taken by amendment of the Act or by Order in Council under Section 308 of the Act, after de tailed inquiries had been made as provided in that Section. It was quite obvious that those detailed inquiries could not be undertaken and completed in time for the present elections.

Mrs. Middleton: If my hon. Friend will allow me—does not this mean that practically all the soldiers who have fought on our behalf in the course of this war will be debarred from voting in this election?

Mr. R. A. Butler: Is it not the case that the Government introduced a Bill to deal with 'this question of voting in Indian elections, and certain recommendations were made with regard to the residential qualification, and the Government at the time gave full consideration to all the perfectly legitimate points raised by the hon. and gallant Member who raised this matter?

Mr. Henderson: That is quite true, but I would remind the hon. Lady that the law which governs the qualifications of all individuals in India was laid down by Parliament in 1935, and the question is whether it would be possible to alter that law under the provisions of the Section to which my hon. and gallant Friend has referred. All I can do is to refer the House to Section 308 of the Government of India Act, 1935, which


provides that before any changes can take place in the electoral qualifications in India, His Majesty's Government must take steps to ascertain the views of the Governments and Legislatures in India who would be affected by the pro posed Amendment and the views of any minority likely to be so affected, and whether a majority of the representatives of that minority in the Federal, or, as the case may be, the Provincial Legislatures, support the proposal. That machinery could not possibly be invoked in present circumstances. The question did arise a few weeks ago under the pro visions of a Bill, endorsed by the House, which provided that a soldier who would otherwise have been deprived of his right to vote by reason of his absence from his place of residence in India, thereby forfeiting his residential qualification, should be protected, and that he should be deemed to have continued his residence, although he was absent on military service. To that extent, the rights of soldiers who were otherwise entitled to vote, but who would have been disqualified by reason of the residential qualification, were safeguarded.
My hon. Friend the Member for New port (Mr. Freeman) asked me to give the various electoral qualifications. That would take up a good deal of time, be cause they vary in some respects in practically each one of the eleven Provinces of India, but broadly speaking, in the Central Legislature, the number of electors is 1,500,000, and the total number of electors for the Provincial Legislatures is in the neighbourhood of something over 30,000,000, the explanation being that there is a much more restricted property qualification in the case of the Central Legislature and a lower property qualification in the case of the Provincial Legislatures. Various other points were raised by my hon. Friend with reference to the Punjab, and he suggested that we should take steps to safeguard those who were entitled to vote in that Province.
I would like to agree with what the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) said with regard to the undesirability of interfering with the de tailed arrangements that may be made in any Province, especially a Province like the Punjab, which has a Ministerial Government, and which has manifested great stability during the last years. We should be very reluctant to interfere with

the detailed arrangements of elections. My hon. and gallant Friend asked why we could not have a system of coloured boxes or symbols in the Punjab, as is the case in other Provinces. I am advised however that the system that they have in the Punjab, by which a distinguishing mark of black discs is put beside the name of each candidate so that the illiterate voter can ascertain how many discs are opposite the name of his candidate, is a system that has been in general use for many years, both for localand other elections, and that it has never been attacked by any of the parties in the Punjab. I am advised also that it is a system that is well understood in that Province, and that it would certainly be quite impracticable at this stage to change it.

Major Wyatt: If I let my hon. and learned Friend have evidence that a political party has attacked it, will he pay attention to the matter?

Mr. Henderson: I will pay attention to any representations that my hon. and gallant Friend, or any other hon. Member, may make, but I must point out that at the present time it is quite impracticable for any change to be made in the system of voting that has operated in the Punjab ever since the system of elections was inaugurated in that Province. I think I have covered most of the points that have been raised. It has been generally accepted on both sides of the House that we have to be very careful about interfering with the way in which the elections are carried out in the various Provinces of India, but so far as we can consider representations pointing out anything that is in the nature of a weakness, we shall be only too glad to do so.

ANGLO-AMERICAN ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL AGREEMENT.

10.30 p.m.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Attlce): I am making this statement at this hour, as hon. Members will realise, owing to the need for a synchronisation with the announcement in the United States of America. I thought it right that this announcement should be made in the House of Commons, and not just in the Press. There are White Papers which


will be found in the Vote Office. This is the statement:
The economic and financial discussions between officials of the United States and United Kingdom Governments, meeting in Washington, have now been completed. These discussions have been concerned with the major problems affecting the basic economic and financial relations between the two countries, in the light of the provisions of Article VII of the Mutual Aid Agreement between their Governments, signed on 23rd February, 1942. They have covered the questions of financial assistance from the United States to the United Kingdom, the demobolisation of war-time trade and monetary restrictions, the settlement of Lend-Lease, the disposal of surplus war property in the United Kingdom owned by the United States, and finally, long-range commercial policies in the broad sense embracing the fields of trade barriers and discrimination, the policies in respect of commodities in world surplus, cartels and international trade organisation, and international aspects of domestic measures to maintain employment.
The purpose of the discussions has been to arrive at mutually advantageous solutions of these problems which the two Governments would commend to the peoples and legislatures of the two countries and to the world as a whole. Both sides have been fully conscious of the significance to other countries as well as their own of the outcome of these discussions, and they have from the beginning had continuously in view the common interests of their Governments in establishing a world trading and monetary system from which the trade of all countries can benefit, and within which the trade of all countries can be con ducted on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis.
The discussions have been successful. Agreement has been reached, subject to the approval of the legislatures of both countries, for the extension by the United States to the United Kingdom of a line of credits of 3,750,000,000 million dollars on the terms stated in the Financial Agreement signed this day, for the following purposes: to facilitate purchases by the United Kingdom of goods and services in the United States; to assist the United Kingdom to meet transitional post-war deficits in its current balance of pay-

ments; to help the United Kingdom to maintain adequate reserves of gold and dollars, and to assist the United Kingdom to assume the obligations of multilateral trade. This credit would make it possible for the United Kingdom to relax import and exchange controls, including ex change arrangements affecting the sterling area, and generally to move forward with the United States and other countries, towards the common objective of expanded multilateral trade.
Agreement has been reached for the final settlement of Lend-Lease and Reciprocal Aid, the disposal of surplus war property in the United Kingdom owned by the United States, and the final settlement of the claims of each Government against the other arising out of the con duct of the war. Agreement has been reached on the broad principles of commercial policy for which the two Governments will seek general international support. These arrangements, if carried out, will put an end to the fear of an economic ally divided world, will make possible throughout the world the expansion of employment, and of the production, ex change and consumption of goods; will bring into being for the first time a common code of equitable rules for the conduct of international trade policies and relations.
The realisation of these proposals will depend upon the support given by the peoples and legislatures of the United States and United Kingdom; and, where they envisage measures requiring broad international collaboration, the support of other countries.

The following documents resulting from these discussions are being issued by the two Governments:

Financial agreement.

Joint statement regarding the under standing reached on Commercial Policy.

Joint statement regarding settlement for Lend-Lease, Reciprocal Aid, Surplus War Property and Claims.

White Papers containing the texts of these documents, together with the texts of the American proposals for consideration by an International Conference on Trade and Employment, are now in the Vote Office. At the same time, a paper containing the statistical material presented during the Washington negotiations is also available.

I will now, with the permission of the House, refer briefly to the Financial Agreement and the Joint Statement regarding settlement of Lend-Lease and Reciprocal Aid, Surplus War Property and Claims. These documents are of a far-reaching character. The Government of the United States has agreed, subject to the approval of Congress, to extend to H.M. Government a credit of 3,750,000,000 dollars for the purposes of helping the United Kingdom to overcome the difficulties of the post-war transition, and to assume, as rapidly as possible, the obligations of multilateral trade. At the same time, H.M. Government has acknowledged a net liability to the United States Government of 650,000,000 dollars arising out of the termination of Lend-Lease and Reciprocal Aid on the conclusion of hostilities, and the acquisition of surplus United States war property as a complete and final settlement of financial claims of each Government against the other arising out of the war. This liability is to be regarded as an addition to the credit, and will be liquidated on the same terms. It brings the assistance extended to H.M. Government by the United States Government up to a total of 4,400,000,000 dollars repayable over 50 years beginning on 31st December, 1951.

Next I should like to read to the House the Joint Statement regarding the understanding reached on Commercial Policy. The Secretary of State of the United States has made public today a document setting forth certain "Proposals for consideration by an International Conference on Trade and Employment." These proposals have the endorsement of the Executive branch of the Government of the United States and have been submitted to other Governments as a basis for discussion preliminary to the holding of such a conference. Equally, the Government of the United Kingdom is in full agreement on all important points in these proposals, and accepts them as a basis for international discussion, and it will, in common with the United States Government, use its best endeavours to bring such discussions to a successful conclusion in the light of the views expressed by other countries.

The two Governments have also agreed upon the procedure for the international

negotiations and the implementation of these proposals. To this end, they have undertaken to begin preliminary negotiations at an early date between them selves and with other countries, for the purpose of developing concrete arrangements to carry out these proposals, including definitive measures for the relaxation of trade barriers of all kinds. These negotiations will relate to tariffs and preferences, quantitative restrictions, subsidies, State trading, cartels, and other types of trade barriers treated in the document published by the United States and referred to above. The negotiations will proceed in accordance with principles laid down in that document. The American "Proposals for consideration by an International Conference on Trade and Employment," are contained in one of the White Papers now avail able in the Vote Office. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will announce the arrangements for an early Debate on 'all these matters.

Finally, since many hon. Members are, no doubt, interested in the Commercial Policy proposed, I will, if I may, finish with some explanatory remarks on this part of the negotiations which have just been concluded.

His Majesty's Government welcome the initiative of the Government of the United States in publishing their proposals for setting up an International Trade Organisation and will be glad to play their part in any international discussions which eventuate on this most important subject.

The proposals which have been published represent not only the constructive thought of the United States Government but also the culmination of a long process of study and exchange of ideas between our own experts and those of the United States.

During this preparatory period extending over two years our experts held a series of informal and most valuable consultations with experts from the Dominions and India who made a number of very helpful contributions on the various topics discussed. The recent talks in Washington preceding the publication of the United States document, were, of course, conducted on behalf of the United Kingdom alone, and I am not in a position to speak for our partners in the Commonwealth, none of whom are in any


way committed and who will each, no doubt, state their views themselves. I would only say now that while we have kept closely in touch with them during the conversations, it is quite understood that each of the Governments concerned will be able to approach the international discussions with full freedom of action in relation to the various matters dealt with in the proposals.

I should make it clear that this proposal is put forward by the United States Government with the object of formulating a basis for an international conference at which their suggestions will be subjected to full discussion before any final agreement is arrived at. Nevertheless, His Majesty's Government in welcoming these proposals, desire to express their agreement with the broad objectives aimed at, that is to draw up a code of conduct for international commerce and facilitate its expansion, so as to secure as far as is possible full employment at rising standards of living in all the countries participating in the scheme.

In the interests of the balance of payments of the United Kingdom, which depends upon the import of foodstuffs and raw materials, it is essential to clear the obstacles to our exports of manufactured goods without abandoning the right to control our imports so long as this is essential to our balance of international payments. The document recognises this fundamental fact. It is to be noted that the preamble to the document stresses the vital need for high and stable levels of employment in all countries, and the necessity for all countries to adopt domestic measures for the preservation of a high level of economic activity. It is, of course, the intention of His Majesty's Government to adopt such measures. But the success of our domestic measures will be assisted, and the expansion of our export trade will be greatly promoted, if other countries also adopt appropriate domestic policies for high and stable levels of employment. For this reason His Majesty's Government particularly welcome this statement of the need for appropriate domestic employment policies.

There is one particular matter arising out of the terms of Article VII of the Mutual Aid Agreement which is of especial interest and importance to the British Commonwealth and Empire—that

is the question of tariff preferences. I would therefore refer shortly to that aspect of the American document which deals with both tariffs and tariff preferences.

The statement sets forth the procedure to be followed by common consent in considering, in the context of a general lowering of tariffs and other trade barriers, what contribution can be made from our side by way of reduction or elimination of preferences.

The statement makes it clear that, in pursuit of the objectives of Article VII of the Mutual Aid Agreement, we for our part are ready to agree that the existing system of preferences within the British Commonwealth and the Empire will be contracted, provided there is adequate compensation in the form of improvement in trading conditions between Common wealth and Empire countries and the rest of the world.

The statement further provides that in entering negotiations for the reduction of tariffs the parties concerned will not refuse to discuss the modification of particular preferences on the ground that these are the subject of prior commitments; on the contrary, all margins of preference will be regarded as open to negotiation, and it will of course be for the party negotiating the modification of any margin of preference which it is bound by an existing commitment to give a third party, to obtain the consent of the third party concerned.

Further points to be noted are:

(i) The statement makes it clear there is no commitment on any country in advance of negotiations to reduce or eliminate any particular margin of preference. The position is that each country remains free to judge in the light of the offers made by all the others, the extent of the contribution it can make towards the realisation of the agreed objectives.
(ii) It is recognised that reduction or elimination of preferences can only be considered in relation to and in return for reductions of tariffs and other barriers to world trade in general which would make for mutually advantageous arrangements for the expansion of trade. There is thus no question of any unilateral surrender of preferences. There must be adequate compensation for all parties affected.

The statement does not in advance of the detailed negotiations lay down how far the process of reduction and elimination of preferences will be carried at this immediate stage. It must be realised that some preferences are of particular importance to the economy of certain parts of the world just as some tariffs are important in others. The elimination of all preferences would be such a step as would require a most substantial and widespread reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers by a large number of countries. Thus it is recognised that the degree to which the final objectives can be reached at the initial stage can only appear at the negotiations themselves and as the result of a mutually advantageous settlement.

There are numerous other proposals in the document dealing with general and export subsidies, quantitative restrictions, State trading, restrictive business practices and commodity arrangements, and also with the proposed International Trade Organisation.

Both the United States and the United Kingdom intend well in advance of the International Conference to carry on between themselves and other countries, including of course in our case British Commonwealth countries, preliminary negotiations upon the subjects dealt with in the American document, in order to prepare the way for and contribute to the success of the International Conference when its meets. It is hoped that at the International Conference which it is pro posed to hold in the summer of next year, these negotiations will be completed on a full international basis and that the International Trade Organisation can be brought into being.

As I have said, His Majesty's Government give their support to this attempt to work out the policy set out in Article VII of the Mutual Aid Agreement and adumbrated in the Atlantic Charter. They earnestly hope that all the countries participating in the meeting will find it possible to make such concessions in their existing tariffs, trade barriers and preferences as to lead to their mutual satisfaction and that thus the way may be open to proceed to the setting up of a world trade organisation which can contain within it every form of public and private international commerce and can at the same time, by bringing some measure

of order into future trade and commercial relations, contribute to that expansion of international commerce and attainment of full employment on which the future of all countries—and particularly our own-depends so much.

There is one point which, I am afraid because this has been a little hurried has been left out of the document. The rate of interest on the line of credit is two percent.

10.50 p.m.

Mr. Churchill: I am sure we are all obliged to the Prime Minister for having brought the House together in order that this announcement might be made to them, instead of having it appear through other channels, in the morning papers. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will realise—no one better—that a statement of this character, so complicated, must be carefully considered in black and white by all of us before we should be able to express any opinion upon it one way or the other. It is evident that a very early focussing of opinion on this matter must be reached, and we shall certainly address ourselves to the topic on this side of the House with the utmost energy with a view to the speedy despatch of this grave business. May I now ask the Leader of the House if he will in the light of what has occurred, state the Business of next week?

Mr. Stokes: On a point of Order. Will that preclude any further questions to the Prime Minister on this subject, if the Business is stated? I wish to ask a question on it.

Mr. Speaker: It will not preclude any questions to the Prime Minister, on Business.

Mr. Stokes: May I ask a question? Mr. Speaker: Yes, on Business.

Mr. H. Morrison: In reply to the right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, the business for next week will be as follows:
Monday, 10th December.—Report state of the Finance Bill; Report and Third Reading of the Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Bill; and Motion to approve the Local Government (Boundary Commission) Order.
Tuesday, 11th December— Third Reading of the Finance Bill; Report and


Third Reading of the Public Health (Scotland) Bill [Lords]; Second Reading of the Local Government (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Bill; and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Wednesday, 12th December—There will be an opportunity on a Motion to 'be proposed by the Government, for the House to debate the result of the Washington negotiations, together with the Bretton Woods agreements. This Debate will be continued, and we hope concluded, by 7 o'clock on Thursday, 13th December. It will also be necessary to pass through all its stages by the end of the week a short Bill enabling the Government to take such action in respect of the Bretton Woods agreements as needs specific legislative authority. This Bill will be presented tomorrow, and we shall ask the House to take the Second Reading and the Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution on Thursday, on the conclusion of the Debate.
Friday, 14th December.—Committee and remaining stages of the Bretton Woods Bill which we hope to conclude by 2 o'clock, in order that the Bill may be sent to another place that same day. Afterwards, we propose to take the Committee stage of the Local Government (Financial Provisions) Bill.
It may, perhaps, be for the convenience of the House if I make it clear that White Papers are now available in the Vote Office dealing with the matters in the statement which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has just made. There is a White Paper entitled "Statistical Material Presented during the Washing ton Negotiations" Cmmd. 6707; a second "Financial Agreement Between the Governments of the United States of America and the United Kingdom dated December 6th, 1945," Cmmd. 6708; and another "Proposals for Consideration by an International Conference on Trade and Employment," Cmmd. 6709.

10.55 P.m.

Mr. Norman Smith: The House has had from the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister a statement of policy which must have a tremendous effect upon the future history, not merely of this country, but of the world. The Prime Minister was followed by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, who told the House

that it was necessary not only to focus opinion quickly but also to take action speedily. Following the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) we have had the right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council, who has announced the Business for next week involving among other things legislation to implement this agreement, legislation to be rushed through the House by Friday next. I have a very vivid recollection, Mr. Speaker, that when you were installed in your Chair at the beginning of this Session you told the House that you were the champion of the back-benchers. It looks to me as though there is here collusion between, on the one hand, the Leader of the Opposition and, on the other hand, His Majesty's Government; and I am asking that this House shall not be required to pass legislation at this very rapid rate. I am asking that my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench shall not require this House to honour the date 31st December for ratifying the Bretton Woods Agreement. This House is being asked to take far too rapid action on a tremendously important matter. I beg, Sir, that a decision on Bretton Woods shall not be taken in this hurried fashion.

10.57 P.m.

Mr. Boothby: I would like to ask one question of the Prime Minister, and that is how he reconciles the statement he has just made, with the repeated pledges given by successive Governments to this House that no decision would be taken on the Bretton Woods Agreement, unless this House had had an opportunity of discussing that agreement. Some of us have been pressing for a discussion on this for the last ten months. We have never been allowed to have a discussion. Now we have a pistol pointed at our heads, and are told that we have to pass the whole thing in three days. I think, with all due respect, that the Prime Minister is not honouring the undertaking repeatedly given by this Government and by both the preceding Governments, to this House. I would like to ask how he reconciles this statement with those undertakings.

The Prime Minister: My statement was that before a decision on Bretton Woods is taken, the House will have an oppor-


tunity for full discussion and debate. And it is proposed that there should be a two-day' Debate on this matter. I think that is fully honouring the pledge.

10.59 p.m.

Mr. Stokes: As it is evident that the terms of this loan are dependent on the Bretton Woods proposals being accepted support the plea made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Notting ham (Mr. N. Smith) and the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) that more time should be given to this matter. May I ask the Prime Minister, in view of the fact that the whole of this arrangement depends on the acceptance of the Bretton Woods proposals and the whole intention of America is to get us back on to the gold standard, will he make it abundantly clear to the country, that acceptance of this policy means a return to the gold standard—

Several Members: No.

Mr. Stokes: And if the Debate must take place next week, will the right hon. Gentleman see that Whips are taken off so that Members can be free to vote according to their opinions?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) will be able to make that point, but I do not accept his premises.

11.1 p.m.

Mr. Beverley Baxter: The Prime Minister, in his very important announcement, mentioned the scaling down of Imperial preferences in return for compensations and advantages which will have to balance what already exists. I would very much like to know whether we are to be presented with legislation to be carried through by the Government with their majority, or whether we are first to have a chance to debate this very important issue before we are presented with Government legislation with, in the end, the imposition of the Government majority.

The Prime Minister: I am afraid the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter) has not got it right. There is no question of legislation on the commercial agreement. The commercial agreement is a point which is going to be discussed at an international conference, and the matter is intimately bound up

with other matters. All that is suggested is, not a unilateral abandonment of preferences, but discussions for a general reduction of trade barriers in which the reduction of preferences might form a part. No legislation is required on that.

11.3 p.m.

Captain Blackburn: Would the Prime Minister, for the purpose of clarifying public opinion on this matter, in view of the important Debate which is to take place next week, indicate whether the total of the loan agreement and the pro posed Bretton Woods proposals would prevent or impede the fulfilment by the Government of the policy of bulk purchase and collective bargaining laid down by the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary at Blackpool?

The Prime Minister: The answer is, "No." I think perhaps hon. Members would find it convenient if they would study the documents obtainable at the Vote Office. They will find answers to-these questions in those documents.

11.4 p.m.

Mr. Stanley Evans: In view of the fact that many hon. Members, and many people throughout the country, regard Bretton Woods as economic strangulation for the British Common wealth of Nations, will the Government consider taking the Whips off on the occasion of this Debate?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. The fact that certain people hold certain opinions does not necessarily mean that, therefore, we should take the Whips off.

Mr. N. Smith: What is the Prime Minister afraid of?

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Stokes rose—

Mr. Speaker: We are not at Question Time now, but on the Motion for the Adjournment. Once an hon. Member has risen and exhausted his right to speak, he may not speak again. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) has already spoken, and therefore, he is not entitled to speak again.

Mr. Stokes: On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. Am I not entitled to ask the Prime Minister a question before he sits down?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has done that already, and he may not speak again.

Mr. Stokes: Further to that point of Order, Sir, I submit, with great respect, that I have not done anything of the sort. I was exercising my right to speak on the Adjournment. I now wish to put a question to the Prime Minister.

Mr. Churchill: Mr. Churchill rose—

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman has already spoken.

Mr. Stokes: Mr. Stokes rose—

Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) persists, I shall begin to get angry.

Mr. Churchill: I was about to ask you, Sir, on a point of Order, whether I am not entitled to put a further question to the Leader of the House on the Business statement which he has made?

Mr. Speaker: On a question of Business, yes.

Mr. Churchill: I would like to ask the Leader of the House whether We may take it that, in regard to the outline of Business for next week, in connection with the statement made by the Prime Minister—a suggested outline but one which will, of course, be interpreted in accordance with the general wishes and desires of the House—if more time is required, we shall not be held to be agreeing at this moment to the allocation that has been proposed.

Mr. H. Morrison: I understand the right hon. Gentleman's position, which is not unreasonable, and, of course, if discussions are desired through the usual channels, they shall take place, but I am bound to say that I ran in a very real difficulty. I am up against the clock and the calendar. The Bretton Woods Agreement, if it is to be effective, must be implemented by 31st December by legislation, and, in order to get it into another place at the proper time, I am advised—and, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) knows, we have had discussions and have put it off a bit to give more time for consideration—but I must get it into another place, I am advised, by two o'clock on Friday of next week. That is the difficulty I am in, and having

pointed out this very real difficulty that really ties me up, certainly I would not wish to prevent any real discussion.

Mr. Stokes: On Business, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. N. Smith: May I ask if it is on your authority, Mr. Speaker, that this House is required either to implement or reject the Bretton Woods agreement by 31st December?

Mr. Speaker: That is a most improper suggestion. I had nothing to do with the Bretton Woods Agreement or with the arrangements. If the hon. Member wishes to object to any arrangements made, when the Bill comes before the House he will be able to vote against it and show his protest.

Sir Alan Herbert: May I ask the Leader of the House whether, in view of the proceedings of the last eight weeks, he will soon—perhaps, next week—reconsider his decision about Private Members' time? May I ask whether, next Friday, he will, perhaps, give up time to discuss Private Members' Bills, because, since the great decision was made, I have studied the time taken by five Members of the Government in Government legislation on Friday There have been eight Fridays since our rights were taken away. As we all remember, the great thing was this great spate of Government legislation—

Mr. Speaker.: The hon. Member is asking that the decision of the House to take away Private Members' time, can be re versed. This cannot be done in the same Session, which has already decided that the right to raise matters is on the Motion for the Adjournment.

Mr. Stokes: May I ask the Lord Presi- dent of the Council, in view of the very serious statement he has just made as to the effect of this on Business next week, whether it is the Government's intention to ask this House to put this country back, as the result of acceptance of the Bretton Woods Agreement, on the gold standard next week, when some of us have spent about 25 years fighting against it?

Mr. Morrison: I am not, myself, a conclusive authority on the gold standard—

Mr. Stokes: The right hon. Gentleman ought to know what he is asking for.

Mr. Morrison: In this matter, I am concerned with the Business of the House, not the gold standard. It does seem to me that, if the Bill is published and the White Paper is available tomorrow, with the Prime Minister's statement, it is not unreasonable to ask that the House should begin the discussion on Wednesday and conclude it, over all, by 2 o'clock on Friday. I really do not think we are treating the House badly. Naturally, the House will have opportunity for all points of view being heard, and, in the mean time, there will be considerable discussion in the Press and otherwise. I do not think we are treating the House in a way which can be described as thrusting this down the throats of the House, without reasonable opportunity for discussion.

11.10 p.m.

Mr. Janner: May I ask a question of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House on Business? We have been promised for some time a Debate on Palestine. I would like to know whether there is a prospect of that taking place before the Recess.

Mr. Morrison: As I said last week, I have no objection to that, but I think that, in the new order of things, whereby we have had two days on the Motion of Censure, and there will be the two and a half days on financial and economic matters next week, I am bound to say; whilst I will still do my best, the prospect dims and dims, and whether we can get the Debate this side of Christmas I do not know.

Mr. Brendan Bracken: May 1 ask a question not based on party bias? The Congress of the United States had three months to discuss this question and surely the holidays are not so sacred that we could not give up some of our time for this most important matter.

Mr. Morrison: I think the right hon. Gentleman would agree with me that, between the procedure of the United States Congress and the British House of Commons, it is very difficult to make a comparison, and I do not think we can make a comparison.

Mr. N. Smith: In view of what Mr. Speaker said to us last August, when we

first took our seats, I want to ask who it is that governs the Business of this House. Who said this legislation must be passed by 31st December?

Mr. Speaker: I have already informed the hon. Member that I do not govern the Business of this House. The Government govern the Business of the House.

Mr. Bracken: Could we not have the eleven days available before the 31st December? There are eleven days on the Business calendar and the House is willing to give up all its time to consider this.

Mr. Morrison: I am not quite sure that the House is necessarily willing to sit on Christmas Day and the other days —[An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"]—I only say I am not sure. Really, the right hon. Gentleman must not assume that what he wants to do the other 640 hon. Members want to do. i am not seeking to be provocative. We shall have a "do" sooner or later, but it must be remembered that the Bill has to go to another place, and they have their rights. That is one of the problems we have to consider, that we have to allow time for the other place to consider the Bill.

Mr. Churchill: On Business, it is always possible for the House to sit Saturday, Sunday or Christmas Day if we need extra days, and feel that our duty cannot be discharged without those extra days. If the House decides, it is fully in our power.

Mr. Morrison: I quite agree that, if that were practicable, that might be worth considering, but the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I must take into account the convenience of another place, 1 am the Leader of this House, but not of another place.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I trust the Leader of the House will not agree to the House sitting on Sundays, which seems to have been very airily put from this side of the House without proper consideration of the Sabbath.

Mr. Speaker: This is a series of questions, and is becoming almost a ragged Debate. If hon. Members study the White Papers, they will learn more about them.

Mr. Clement Davies: May I make another suggestion? Would it be possible for the Government to begin the discussion on Tuesday instead of on Wednesday and thus give a third extra day?

Mr. Churchill: I hope, before the question is answered, the right hon. Gentleman will not deny us the opportunity of an interval for consideration of these tangled matters before we come to a decision.

Mr. Morrison: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. As a matter of fact we were going to start on Tuesday, and that point was forcibly put on behalf of the Opposition. I had sympathy with it because I think the House should have an opportunity of studying the matter before the Debate begins. The other problem is that there is a lot of Business to get done before the Christmas Recess, and if the hon. and learned Member's suggestion would mean sacrificing the Tuesday in the sense that I lost that Business, I should be in a difficulty. That is the kind of arrangement that is circumscribed.

Captain Gammans: A point arises which I think is of the utmost importance from the statement that the Prime Minister has made. Before the Debate comes off next week will he say at what rate between the dollar and the pound—the parity of the pound in relation to the dollar—these sums have been fixed, both in regard to the repayment of capital and of interest?

It being a quarter past Eleven o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Whiteley.]

The Prime Minister: I think hon. Members will realise that at this hour it is difficult to go into detailed questions. There will be full opportunity of doing it when the Members have read the White Papers. I think it is inadvisable to go into these things now.

Mr. E. P. Smith: Can the Prime Minister assure us that when this Debate takes place, in view of the wide disparity of opinion which there is on all

sides of the House and in the country, the Government will not have the Whips on, and that we shall have a free vote?

The Prime Minister: I have already replied to that point. Our practice in this House is that the Government should take responsibility for the Measures which they bring forward.

Mr. Pargiter: Is the financial settlement with America completely dependent upon the Bretton Woods Agreement?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, the Bretton Woods Agreement is part of the whole Agreement.

Mr. N. Smith: Shame.

The Prime Minister: I think hon. Members had better read the whole thing. I know that certain hon. Members have an almost religious fervour on this point.

Mr. N. Smith: Why not?

The Prime Minister: I quite agree, and I do not grudge it to the hon. Member, but I think it would be better if hon. Members would look at this thing as a whole, and study this document. There will be plenty of opportunities for my hon. Friends below the Gangway to vent all their wrath when they really know what they are talking about.

Several hon. Members: Several hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: I have already allowed the Prime Minister to make several speeches, and I cannot allow hon. Members to put questions to the right hon. Gentleman which will require further lengthy answers.

Mr. Stokes: Might I put 'this point to the Prime Minister— —

Mr. Speaker: Not to the Prime Minister. He cannot speak again.

Mr. Stokes: To the Lord President, then.

Mr. Speaker: In respect of Business?

Mr. Stokes: Yes, Sir, on Business. May I ask whether, in his consideration of the Business for next week and what may follow it he will bear in mind the repeated promises that have been made to this House to allow us full time to consider this matter before the decision is


taken? The Americans have had months in which to discuss this matter, and if the right hon. Gentleman rushes this thing through the verdict of this country will be that he has sold us out to the moneylenders.

Mr. Harold Macmillan: Mr. Harold Macmillan (Bromley)  rose—

Mr. Stokes: May I have an answer?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member can not make another speech.

Mr. Stokes: On a point of Order. Has not the Motion for the Adjournment been moved again, and therefore can 1 not I peak again? I crave your fairness in this matter.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is correct. I overlooked the second Motion. He may therefore then ask the Lord President of the Council to answer.

Mr. H. Morrison: If I get the permission of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I think it is unreason able for the hon. Member to assume that nobody has heard of Bretton Woods before this statement was made.

Mr. Stokes: There has been no discussion here.

Mr. Morrison: I know, but a knowledge of documents and proposals has been knocking about for months. I have read the Agreement, but not with that fullness that I ought to have, I admit; but I have heard of the Bretton Woods Agreement for some time, and therefore the subject has been known. The question is whether we are giving reasonable notice of Debate. I suggest that we are. Whether there should be any question of suspension of Rule on the Wednesday, to give a bit more time, we would be willing to discuss through the usual' channels, to meet in any way we can hon. Gentlemen who are concerned in that respect.

11.20 p.m.

Mr. Harold Maemillan: Before the right hon. Gentleman sits down may I put this to him? This is a very grave matter. I fully realise the difficulties in which, from the point of view of time, the Government and the House find themselves. Perhaps we might ask that, as a result of the interchanges,

the Leader of the House would regard the time-table as fluid, as a matter for discussion through the usual channels, so that we can reach the best possible arrangement for the discussion of a matter of such great importance. I am quite sure that the House would place itself at the disposal of the Government and if there was any inconvenience with regard to the holiday the House would be very willing to make the necessary arrangements. We have been very fairly met by the Leader of the House and we might come to some arrangement as to the discussion, so that even he might find an opportunity to read the Bretton Woods Agreement in the interval.

Mr. H. Morrison: I did not say that I had not read it at all. I only said that, in those earlier days, when I used to hear of Bretton Woods so frequently, I had not thoroughly read the agreement then. Of course, I have read all about it during these recent days. I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan) that we will certainly be prepared to discuss this matter through the usual channels and see whether any elasticity can be found. I do not want to make a firm promise. My trouble is to find the elastic, and there really is not very much about at this time.

11.22 p.m.

Mr. N. Smith: My right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council has told the House that all of us have had ample time in which to consider this thing. I would submit that that is obviously inaccurate, for the simple reason that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said tonight explicitly that the Bretton Woods ratification is part of the whole affair. This has only been announced less than an hour ago. That being so, I want to ask the Government if they would not put this matter off until after the Christmas Recess. The Prime Minister said, I think, most improperly, that some of us are treating this subject with religious fervour. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with a man being sincere? Many of us are sincere about this thing, and 1 beg of you, Mr. Speaker, as the protector of the back benchers to see that we are let down and that there is no collusion between the two Front Benches. All I ask of the Government is to put this off until after the Christmas Recess.

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid I cannot order the Government how to deal with Business.

Flight-lieutenant Beswick: May I ask the Prime Minister what is sacrosanct about the date, 31st December? What principle would be involved in setting it back?

The Prime Minister: I am afraid I have exhausted my right to speak.

Mr. Stokes: On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask you, in order to get it on record, whether in view of the fact that this statement involves legislation, the whole of this discussion is not out of Order on the Adjournment?

Mr. Speaker: It may eventually require legislation, but the statement had to be made. I say quite frankly I was concerned with the point, and it does not break the Rule.

Mr. Stokes: For the sake of the record, Sir, and not with any intention to dispute your verdict, may I point out that the Leader of the House stated that legislation would be introduced next week. We then proceeded to discuss his statement

and the statement of the Prime Minister, which clearly involve legislation. Clearly, therefore, it was out of Order.

Mr. Speaker: That is why I have been trying to keep to Business questions only.

Flight-Lieutenant Beswick: As the Prime Minister has not spoken since a quarter past eleven, when the new Motion for the Adjournment was put, is he not in Order in answering my question about the date?

The Prime Minister: On that point of Order. I regret to say I have spoken since the Adjournment was moved again. I can speak again only by leave of the House. The short answer to the question which has been put is that under the terms of the Bretton Woods Agreement, becoming an original Member of the Bretton Woods undertaking is dependent on the matter being passed by legislation before 31st December.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-six Minutes past Eleven o'Clock.